No Difference
by attackfishscales
Summary: After Harry talks to Dumbledore in Deathly Hallows, he takes a little detour to Spinner's End, back before it was Snape's house, back when it belonged to a woman named Eileen prince. Snape couldn't be angrier that Harry Potter is his father.
1. Beginning at the End

Author's Note: This story is in response to the Thematic_hp livejournal commuity's Parents&Guardians challenge, prompt #17 (round 8) Through time travel, Harry is Snape's biological father. Severus really isn't happy to find that out. (Must be drama - not comedy.) Submitted by Lothy (Lanta on this site)

* * *

Chapter One: Beginning at the End

"_Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"_

As Dumbledore spoke, he faded away, and Harry closed his eyes. The world winked away, and when he opened his eyes, he expected to awake on the ground where he had fallen, living again after another one of Voldemort's killing curses. It was a very strange feeling to remember it that second time.

Yet, when he opened his eyes, he was nowhere near the Forbidden Forest, nor indeed anywhere near Hogwarts. He had no idea _where_ he was at all. Yet the dark dusty room he had appeared in with its ragged couch cushions and peeling wallpaper nagged at his memory. He had seen this place before, he just didn't know _where._

He pulled himself up into a sitting position, his knees tucked up under his chin. A spring from the dilapidated couch poked into his tailbone. "Excuse me!" a shrill woman's voice startled him, and he looked up to see a sallow faced woman rising from an armchair across from him. "Who are you, and what are you dong in my house?"

He meant to tell her he meant no harm, and he would be leaving as soon as she told him where he was, but she pointed a wand at him and stared at him across it in a suddenly familiar way. What came out instead was "You're… you're…"

"Yes?" She demanded, her wand twitching in her hand.

He swallowed, trying to wet his mouth. "Eileen Prince," he finished lamely.

"Who are you," she snarled, "and what are you doing in my house!" She jabbed her wand closer to his face until it pointed between his eyes. A shiver spread through him, and she calmed. "You will tell me."

"When am I?"

"What do you mean when…" her wand lowered a bit. "Time turner accident?"

His mind caught up with him at last. "Something like that, I wasn't expecting-"

"Who are you?"

"H-harry, Harry Potter." He suddenly hoped that there hadn't been some other Potter who had gone to Hogwarts with _her_ and made _her_ life miserable too.

"How far back did you come?" Suddenly he had become a puzzle, and alone, his wand remaining against his chest, he seemed not to be a threat to her. She relaxed. A satisfied smile spread across her face. Harry's lips curved up in answer. Eileen didn't really look like her son. She was actually quite pretty when she smiled.

Harry's stomach twisted at the thought. "I don't know what year it is, much less anything else."

"January 9th, 1959."

"1959!"

"That's what I said, wasn't it?" her voice sparked with annoyance. Puzzles were supposed to sit still let her solve them, not repeat what she had just said.

"I'm from… I'm from…"

"Just spit it out."

"1998." Her black eyes widened to match his glassy green ones.

"thirty-nine years… she breathed.

"Thirty nine and a half," his voice cracked on the last word and she stared at him. "I don't understand, why am I here?"

"When you mess with time, it likes to mess back. I want to know what you did to get here."

He smiled at her. She paced around the couch and wrinkled her brow, her speed increasing with every word she said. It reminded him of Hermione, and he wondered if he'd get back at the right time to kill Voldemort. He'd never been mixed up in this sort of thing without their help. He'd never been mixed up in this sort of thing at all, but he would've felt more like he could handle it with Ron and Hermione with him.

"I died." Eileen stopped and whirled around. Her skirt twisted and flapped against her legs. "Someone hit me with a killing curse, I talked to Dumbledore's ghost, and he told me he was sending me back, and I landed here."

'You're mad, that's what you are." Her wand came out of her pocket again to point at him.

Harry uncurled slowly. "Really, I've been hit with the killing curse twice, the first time I was a baby and," he paused, pondering what he should tell her. "Someone performed sacrificial magic to keep me alive." She didn't need to know it was his mother. Was Eileen prince alive in 1981? He couldn't risk her telling anyone.

A sharp peel of laughter fell from her mouth, but it had a half hysterical, half exasperated tinge to it. "And the second time? How do you explain the second time?"

"The same person tried to kill me again, but this time he used a wand that wasn't his."

She scrunched her eyes together and opened her mouth as if she wanted to scream. Her puzzle was turning into a full blown riddle. "That shouldn't have anything to do with it!"

"With this wand it did."

"I don't know what's going on with you, I don't know who you are, or how you got here, you don't make any sense with what you say, and you tell me that the headmaster of Hogwarts' ghost sent you here." With every word she spoke, she shook her head.

"It doesn't make any sense to me either!" Standing up, he slumped against the arm o the couch. "I just want to get home."

Her eyes narrowed. "Your best chance at getting back without a time turner is to go back to the location you were right before you came here." If he left and went to his own time, then that was it and she knew all there was to know about him, and if he didn't, she would think about if he didn't.

At another time, he might have been annoyed at someone telling him something any fourth year would know. "Just put that wand away, and I'll leave okay?" He just didn't want her to curse him, and that wasn't much to ask for.

The wand lowered again, and she slipped it into her sleeve. Sharply, she pointed to the door. Scrambling out of the house, he threw her one backwards look, and Apparated away to the edge of Hogwarts grounds.

Harry slipped trough the dusky landscape, heading for the forest as quickly as he could without being seen. How many times had Hermione told him that he couldn't be seen while in the past, that it could cause all kinds of problems? He didn't want to change the future, he just wanted to get back to it.

* * *

Hogwarts hadn't changed at all, or wouldn't change maybe, since he had first seen it. The grounds still spilled park like all around the imposing fantastic castle that was nothing like a medieval fortress inside. It looked as if he could just go in and see Ron and Hermione waiting for him. He smiled. He'd get Hogwarts back to this again. He had to.

The lake glittered with the first stars of the night as he skirted its edge and passed into the forest. Gloom settled over the forest in the twilight shadows, the thin grey light he had somehow worse than darkness. He hadn't been in the Forbidden Forest as many times as Fred and George, but he had been it a fair number of times, starting back in first year. He should have known he would face Voldemort in it someday; he had found Quirrell here, drinking the unicorn blood for him here. Each of the times he had traveled through the trees had something to do with Voldemort, just like so many things with him. He never felt the need to go exploring like his father and his friends or like Fred and George, because the exploring and the adventure, and of course the trouble, mostly trouble, came to him on its own.

His feet steadfastly carried him to the place where he had 'died' at Voldemort's hands. Thirty nine years didn't matter. A hundred years wouldn't matter. The underbrush was different, and there were a few saplings missing, but he could feel this was where he was to go back from. he paced around in a circle, spiraling inward, trying to get his feet over every inch of the area, but he felt no sudden tingle of magic, saw no flashing forward of time, as he had seen in reverse when using Hermione's time turner. Nothing happened. He tried lying face down in the dirt where he fell, standing where Voldemort had stood when he cast the curse, anything that might do something, but nothing happened. He couldn't get home. His fists clenched and he let out a cry of frustration. It should have worked.

His shoulders slumping, he trudged his way back to the Apparition boundary to go back to the only person who knew him in 1959. He just wished it wasn't Snape's mum.

* * *

The gentle banging on the door woke Eileen up from her nap in the dilapidated armchair she had first been in when Harry had appeared. She swung her legs down from their place on the chair arms, and unlocked the door and pulling the brass pin out of the slot. She groaned, thinking she knew who was at the door as she opened it. When it swung inward, the figure on the doorstep confirmed her suspicions. "Potter! What are you doing back here?"

"It didn't work, I even tried lying face down in the dirt."

She stepped aside, and he slid past her, as if he couldn't even think about touching her. "Well, sit down then," she snapped, suddenly reminding him of Snape.

She faced him, hands on her hips and glowered at him. "I don't even know if you're really from the future, Potter, what am I supposed to do with you?"

When he did answer, it sounded tremulous even to him. "Can I stay here?"

"Oh hell," she exclaimed, stamping up the stairs and into her room, shutting the door and leaving him alone on the couch.

* * *

Eileen wanted to crawl under her bed. Why did the completely impossible have to happen to her today? Couldn't it have happened to someone else? Like Elizabeth Draper, that nasty girl in Ravenclaw back when they were in school? She wanted to figure him out maybe, but that had its limits. Strange and unexpected magical events could only cause trouble, that was just common sense.

She couldn't just turn him out; she'd feel awful about it, like kicking a puppy, but she didn't want to have to keep him. Getting rid of him meant helping him, then, but that sounded hard, like nothing she had ever done before, like something that would give Dumbledore trouble. He felt like a chaos bringer to her, someone who attracted trouble like most people ate and drank.

Still, he was alone, and she was as magical as he, and one of the best duelists of her year. He wasn't a threat, and she still wanted to figure him out. She liked riddles, even ones that came wrapped up as handsome green eyed time travelers who made a mess of things for her. She could use a little messing up, her life wasn't to great to start with, and she would like a bit of excitement. She could guarantee that keeping him around would at least be exciting.

Making her decision, she shot to her feet and opened the door.

* * *

Harry perched on the couch cushions fidgeting. At first he had just tried to find a comfortable position between all of the popped springs, but as it took longer and longer for Eileen to come back down, his feet started tapping, and he moved his way across the couch in tiny wiggling increments. It came as a relief when he first heard her door creek open. The break in the silence startled him startled him into jumping when it opened, bit still it was a relief.

"You were sent here by someone right?" she queried as she came down the stairs to stand in front of him. "You say it's Dumbledore's ghost, but whoever it is, someone actually sent you here."

"Yeah, I think so." What she wanted out of his answers, he didn't know, but he figured it was a bad idea not to answer.

"That means you were sent here to do something right?"

"Most likely."

"Then you probably won't be able to get back to your time until you do it, though hopefully you will be able to get back after that."

"I'm sure Dumbledore wants me back in my time; I'm too useful there."

"My, don't you think well of yourself."

"Well-"

"Never mind. You weren't just sent to this time, you were specifically sent to this place, to my house, which means that whatever you need to do to get back has to do with me, my house, or both."

"Yeah, I guess."

"If that's the case, then the best thing you can do is stay with me until such an opportunity presents itself."

"So can I-" Every light on the street had been turned off except the lights in Eileen's house. Midnight was approaching quickly, and Harry wanted his fate decided so he could sleep.

"You can sleep on the couch." Her feet pounded on the steps as she moved just short of running up them to the security of her room.

"Can I have-" he shouted to her, but before he finished, a pillow and blanket landed with a thump in the middle of the floor. "Thank you.


	2. Not Half so Pretty

Chapter Two: Not Half so Pretty

Harry rubbed his face and groped for his glasses on the scratched up coffee table. For a beautiful moment, he forgot where he was, and thought he might be in the hospital wing and as soon as he untangled himself from the blanket Madam Pomfrey would start fussing over him. Then he smelled the wool, dust, and potions ingredients and remembered where he was, far from Hogwarts' calm, sterile hospital wing, in Eileen Prince's house on Spinner's End in 1959.

He shoved the blankets off and jammed his glasses onto his face. Stumbling to his feet, he ambled his way into the kitchen and gazed out the grimy window at the brown grey river. Without thinking, he shuffled though the drawers looking for food. In a drawer under a cooling charm, he found milk, eggs, and shortening, and across the counter, he found bread. When Eileen came into the room, he had egg frying and bread toasting.

"What are you doing?"

"Cooking breakfast, do you want some?"

She glared at him. "Yes please."

He squinted his eyes in surprise at her glower, but he supposed he deserved it. It took some nerve to stay in a strange woman's house and then wake up and start cooking her food without asking her. He fetched a pair of plates and slid an egg out onto each and threw a few pieces of toast with each. Pouring them each a glass of milk, he put one next to each plate and smiled at her.

Despite herself, she smiled back. It was the sort of smile a dog gave its master when it wanted to go for a walk. She sagged down into one of the kitchen chairs and wondered if a lot of men cooked when he came from. The sleeve of her heavy wool dressing gown slid down over her hand as she reached for the fork that he was busy placing on the table. As she ate, she peered at him over the food. He couldn't have been very old at all, younger than she was even. "How old are you?"

Harry blinked, the question startling him. "Seventeen."

She sniffed at him. "Just out of Hogwarts then."

He didn't bother to correct her. "Well, you can't be much older."

"Nineteen," she laughed. "Two years."

So you've been out of Hogwarts two years then?"

"One and a half." She sighed, "and I'm still stuck here."

"You have your own house, that's nice at least." The house made him wonder. How did an obviously poor witch who didn't appear to work afford even a miserable place like this?

"I hate this place. Besides, it belonged to my aunt and uncle, and they were the only good thing about it."

"Yeah, but at least you have it."

"That's something I guess. I don't have any idea why they wanted to live here though." Her shoulders drooped. "All the houses over here used to belong to the factory for its employees back before it closed. It's an awful place."

From what Harry had seen, he agreed wholeheartedly. "Why don't you sell it and move somewhere else?"

She laughed the same half exasperated laugh she had the night before. "It isn't like I have the money to buy anything better. I make my living making dodgy potions for people who want to make their enemies impotent. Or worse, pimply."

Harry shook his head, thinking that in some strange way, she was the forerunner to the Weasley twins, selling petty mayhem, but without the fun. "Why don't you get a job?" From what he remembered from History of Magic classes, the Wizarding World had always been more open about women in the workplace.

Her expression turned from bitter to bleak. "I didn't study for my N.E.W.T.s. It wasn't like they mattered, I was just going to get married and settle down. The only things I did well in were Potions and Herbology. Flat out failed Defense Against the Dark Arts, and just squeaked by in charms."

"Er…" He really didn't have anything to say to that. Then he realized something. "No, you aren't married, are you?" If this was 1959, then Snape would have to either be born this year or next.

She almost spat out a mouthful of egg. "No, of course not, _I live alone!_"

"Yeah, I noticed."

She pushed her empty plate away from herself so hard he had to catch it before it sailed off the table. It occurred to him as he cast scourgify on their dishes that he might have somehow offended her. Again he didn't know what to say. "Can I use the shower?"

"Upstairs in the middle," she snarled. "Dry up when you're done."

He fled, but she followed, going back to her room. She pushed a pile of flannel shirts and jeans into his arms. "These are my uncle's. When you're done, put these on you look like a prat in what you're wearing now."

* * *

When Harry was taking his shower, Eileen had been getting dressed, so when he came down stairs, she was wearing a faded yellow dress of the sort Aunt Petunia wore when she especially wanted to appear the old fashioned mother, only Eileen's dress was threadbare and sloppily stitched. Someone had made it, and either hadn't spent much time on it or wasn't very good at making dresses. She seemed ill at ease in it, picking at the lace which was coming off the short sleeves. However, from what he had seen, she probably looked ill at ease in anything except a Hogwarts uniform.

"You're too small to wear my uncle's clothes."

He just grimaced at her and sank onto the couch, watching her. A piece of parchment and a thick book sat unopened on her lap. She was using it to write a letter on. "Who you writing to?"

"Gringotts, I need them to change some galleons into pounds." A scrawny screech owl sat puffed up on her shoulder, tucked into her hair where he hadn't seen it before. She picked him up and tied the letter and a bag of coins to his leg, and took him to a window to let him fly away.

"Aren't you afraid your neighbors will see you using an owl to deliver mail?"

She shook her head. "They already think I'm eccentric. It won't make any difference."

"You are eccentric."

She blushed as if he'd given her the sweetest of complements. "You really think so?" As he nodded, thinking she reminded him of Luna, she composed herself, pushing her shoulder length hair behind her ears. "You realize that if you stay here, you're going to have to work? I can't afford to feed you otherwise."

He shifted nervously. "What do you want me to do?"

"How good are you at potions?"

It didn't matter if he was good at potions or not. She rushed away upstairs and signaled for him to follow. They could barely stand together on the tiny upstairs landing as she opened the door on the other side of the bathroom from her bedroom. It was the only other room upstairs, and Harry figured it must have been Snape's when he was growing up. Harry thought it was fitting that it had been his mother's potions workroom. Repeating her question, she ushered him inside the cramped room.

Every inch of the wall held a shelf crammed full of plants, animal parts, stones, and the sort of disgusting things in glass jars that had so repulsed him as he had waited for detentions in Snape's classroom. In sixth year, he had had to use some of those things, and they had lost a bit of their novelty.

"I was only average at potions, nothing special."

"Did you get into N.E.W.T.s?"

"Yeah," and he did it without her son's book, and with him hassling Harry every step of the way, but he didn't mention that.

"Then you can prepare the ingredients." One finger pointed imperiously at the table. "The directions are on page forty-six in the grey book on the shelf behind the table.

While he pulled out the book and opened it, setting it down on the table, she propped up her cauldron on a table under the room's only window, opening it. "No magical ventilation," she explained. "I usually just keep finished potions on the other table."

As he thumbed through the book to the right page, he asked, "Don't you need the instructions?"

She looked insulted. "For a sterility draught?"

"I would."

"You don't make them almost every day. People pretty much order the same potions from me all the time. I keep boils potions on stock, and I'd keep sterility draughts too, but they only last a few days."

He chopped, diced, pounded, and shredded in silence while she waited patiently for her ingredients. When he finished, she peered at his work. "You grated my salamander skin instead of shredding it."

"There's a difference?"

"It's close enough anyway," she winced. "Well? Pick up the second letter and start preparing the components for that one! The whole point of having you help me is to speed things up."

As she brewed each potion, he prepared the ingredients for the next. With each potion finished, she took it off the tripod she had set up over a Bunsen burner and set it down on the other side of the table to cool. More and more cauldrons soon sat there until Harry had to ask, "How many cauldrons do you have?"

She gave him an odd look. "Three pewter, one brass, one bronze, and one copper."

"What are you going to do when you run out of cauldrons?"

"I'm going to pour the potions into jars, and you are going to wash the cauldrons in the bathroom sink."

"Ah, well that works then."

* * *

By the time the sun had begun to set and Eileen told him they were done, Harry's hands ached and he had cut himself twice. He had managed to smash his hand with her pounding stone, which had caused him to swear and ask why she didn't have a mortar and pestle. "If you work fast, I might get enough money to buy one," she replied sweetly.

"So do I get to eat?"

"I usually manage four or five potions Potter, and today we did twelve. I think I'll feed you." She grinned. "If you keep this up, I'll put an advert in the daily prophet."

He hoped he wouldn't be staying at Spinner's End that long, but he stayed silent. She nearly skipped down the stairs, and he followed. "Do you mind cooking again?" She called up to him. "I'm dreadful."

At the bottom of the stairs, he turned to her, "but you're a potions maker."

"And everything I cook tastes like potions." She smiled ruefully. "You don't have to cook, but I think you'll want to."

"Fine by me, so long as I get to eat it."

She snorted at him and he grinned disarmingly.

* * *

That night Harry didn't even consider sleeping on the couch again. One night with popped springs poking into his back keeping him awake was more than enough. He transfigured the couch into a bed as best he could, achieving something that resembled the sort of bed he could imagine Mrs. Figg having as a little girl, piled high with pink flowered comforters and knitted afghans. What it lacked in masculinity, however, it made up for in comfort, and he was unwilling to try again and maybe get something worse.

Clambering into bed, he settled down to sleep, pulling off his glasses and dropping them onto the coffee table. He pulled the covers over his head and shut his eyes, but his throbbing hand kept him awake. As he lay there, he sucked on the cuts and stared at the underside of the quilt. When sleep did take him, it took him by surprise, so long was it in coming.

He was just beginning to dose when a horrible wailing woke him. His heart pounding, he sprang out of bed and ran up to Eileen's room. He stopped at her bedroom door as he heard her talking to someone out her window. "Go away, Snape, and don't you dare call that singing."

"Aw, Eileen, won' you come down 'ere and kish me?"

"Tobias Snape, you're drunk, go home to your ma!"

"Won' you take me home?" he crooned. "Ma's not 'alf as pretty as you."

"Get out of here, you idiot!" she cried, throwing an empty jam jar she used as a cup at him so that it shattered at his feet. He scrambled away and she slammed the window down so hard the glass rattled. "I know you're out there Potter."

"Sorry, I thought you were in trouble or something.

"No more than normal." She sighed, "I just wish I could hex him."

"Oh, well. Good night then."

She looked at him like she wouldn't mind chasing _him_ downstairs with an empty jam jar.

Harry retreated as gracefully as he could back to the living room. So that was Snape's father? He couldn't wrap his mind around it. Eileen appeared to genuinely dislike him, and he thought she was far to smart to fall for him. All she had wanted to do was send him on his way as fast as possible.

It brought it home, hearing her call him by the name Tobias Snape. This was Snape's home, this was his mother. His stomach clenched. He liked her too much for her to be Snape's mother. He liked her too much for her to marry someone like Tobias Snape. It hurt too much to think of her with someone like that.

Sighing, he crawled back to bed.

* * *

The next morning, he awoke early and started making French toast. He whistled cheerfully as the bread fried. Eileen shambled down the stairs in her dressing gown. "If you don't stop whistling, I'll give you a concussion."

"My, aren't you in a good mood this morning."

"You are far too chipper this early in the morning."

He sighed and made her a cup of strong tea. She just held it in her hands and let the steam billow into her face as he served them both French toast and honey. Sipping distractedly at the tea, she shoveled breakfast into her mouth. "Where did you learn to cook so well?"

He shrugged. "I just did a lot of cooking when I was a kid," he answered, not wanting to get into his life with his aunt and uncle with Eileen. She raised her eyebrows, but didn't ask further.

A faint tapping at the kitchen window interrupted them, and Eileen shuffled her way over to it to open it. Fourteen owls flew in, knocking the tea cups and sugar bowl off the table. His mouth dropped open. "Don't worry Potter, this is all perfectly normal."

"Fourteen!"

"I usually have to refuse most commissions." Delicately, she began untying the letters and pouches of coins. She grinned, "But not today."

He groaned. "How do you get them the potions if the owls don't stick around?" he asked as the owls all flew away. He stared at her screech owl sitting in his perch next to the oven. It was barely larger than Pigwidgeon.

"Nero can carry anything, can't he? Small but mighty. He just picks up the handles on the potion jars and flies away with them. He flies in and out all day." Deftly, she counted the coins and turned to him. "I need to do some shopping before we can start today; you can use the shower while I'm gone, and get the ingredients for the first potion ready."

* * *

Their days began to fall into a pattern, and a month flew past before he noticed it. Every few days, she would head out to the grocery store or to Diagon Alley, and recluse that she was, couldn't otherwise be seen outside the house. No one called on them to remark on it, so Harry assumed that this was normal for her, or that she wasn't well liked in town.

He never left the house at all, not wanting to cause a paradox, and because Eileen didn't want him seen coming and going from her house. "Everyone will think we're lovers!" she explained exasperated when he asked about it.

That first week, she brought home a mortar and pestle, handing it to him proudly, and in the end of January, she carried a bag bulging with a collapsible brass cauldron four times the size of her other cauldrons. "For stock potions," she explained.

When he told her that it wouldn't fit over her Bunsen burner, she lit the kitchen fireplace and he didn't mention it again.

One day, he finished the ingredients for a potion quite a bit before Eileen was ready to start on the next one. Without any comment, she signaled him over and handed him the ladle. "Stir it counterclockwise every ninety seconds until I say stop," was all she said as she began preparing the next potion.

Eventually, she had him brewing his own potions, which she had pronounced good enough, and he soon learned why she didn't need the book anymore. The night he brewed his first potion for her, a hair loss potion, she bought a whole chicken, and he made chicken and stuffing for dinner.

Early on, he began to complain about the dust, and she told him he could clean the house if he wanted it clean, because she wasn't going to. As he took up the cleaning as well as the cooking at the last house on Spinner's End, he wondered if she would ever tell the same thing to Tobias Snape and how he would reply if she did.

Harry found he didn't mind cooking and cleaning so much if he got to enjoy the benefits of both, and if he could at least mostly magic the house clean. He supposed that Eileen's woeful charms weren't really up to cleaning the house by magic, and he could see why she wouldn't want to tackle the task by hand. It reminded him of Grimmauld Place only smaller and without all the dark curses.

Twice more, Tobias Snape woke them up, trying to sing outside Eileen's bedroom window, and twice more, she took aim and threw something cheep, heavy, and replaceable at him. Harry began to suspect that she kept a supply of such things up there for just that purpose. "He doesn't do this to anyone else," Eileen told him after the second time; "I just wish he'd do this to Jane Winston, two houses down. She's prettier, and she deserves it anyway."

While he stayed at Eileen's house, he watched and waited for something that he might need to do to make the future the way it hat turned out, so that he could get back home. Yet nothing showed itself. He never left the house, and spent all his time with Eileen. He was sure no amount of potions brewing and housework was going to affect the future in any meaningful way.

Harry kept waiting for an opportunity to change _something_, but nothing ever happened, and for a month and a half, nothing changed.


	3. Foxes, Nightingales, and Larks

Chapter Three: Foxes, Nightingales, and Larks

Towards the end of February, Eileen came downstairs after her shower in her dressing gown, her wet hair trailing down to brush her shoulders. During the day she had it clipped back in bobby pins, or if she was brewing, tied back with a ribbon, but just then she just let it fall onto her wool dressing gown, leaving a wet spot, looking like a blotchy shadow under her hair.

Watching him clean the bookshelf, she managed to look sullen even as she smiled smugly at him. She dropped into the armchair and he wondered if it was anymore comfortable than the couch had been. She raised her eyebrows as he dusted the shelf by hand, pulling off the books one by one. He decided her face was one that looked best moving. It wasn't that she was unattractive, she just didn't photograph well. He smiled back at her.

She tucked her legs up under her as she watched. Harry disliked the bookcase, because he couldn't cast a _scourgify_ on the books, or he'd get them damp, and if he tried to cast _tergeo_ or vanish the dust, he'd probably vanish the books, one of which was her old _Advanced Potions Making_ book from school, a very familiar volume that he couldn't risk being destroyed. Consequently, he had to wash the whole thing by hand.

"Do you like watching me clean your house?" She had the strangest smirk on her face, and he had to ask.

"I can't deny I feel some satisfaction at watching anyone other than me clean this place, but there are other reasons to watch you."

He blinked at her and almost fell off the kitchen chair he was standing on to reach the highest shelf. She winked at him.

"Are you flirting with me Eileen?" Sometime in the last month, he had begun to call her by name, and he had stopped being Potter and started being Harry.

"Why ever would you think that?" she asked, wiggling her heavy brows in a mock lascivious way.

He somehow pursed his lips and smiled. "You winked at me."

She grinned. Of course she was flirting with him. It felt nice. She had never had the chance to do this at Hogwarts.

"I'm surprised at you."

"Why Harry? I'm not much older than you are." When she wanted it to be, her smile could be quite infectious. He laughed.

* * *

A week later, Harry thought that if he didn't leave the house somehow, he wouldn't last long enough to do what he was supposed to do in 1959, whatever it might be. He broached the question at dinner, resolved to sneak out after dark if she didn't agree.

Surprisingly, she agreed immediately, after denying any possibility of him leaving the house and perhaps being seen. So it was that late that night, just after midnight, they pulled on their coats and slipped out of the house to walk along the river. Every light in every house along Spinner's end was off and no one was awake to watch them. A thin film of late winter ice glazed the river, and Harry had to pull his overlarge coat around him.

Suddenly he was acutely aware how ridiculous he must look in Eileen's uncle's clothing, skinny and not exactly tall young man that he was, hair reaching to his shoulders. Though the air was cool, his hands sweated, and he pulled them into his sleeves. They felt clammy, and he flushed.

Eileen smiled as she grabbed his arm and pulled him along the bank of the river. A litter of fox kits hid under a bush and mewled and whimpered as they passed. He pointed them out to her, smiling, amazed. She shook her head. "Some of the people around here still keep chickens. They kill them every chance they get. The children throw rocks at them and chase them out with sticks."

"Er…"

"Don't worry, they almost always get away."

Harry didn't quite have any idea what to say to that. Every time he thought anything, it disappeared before he could grab onto it and say it. "Well that's good at least." She smiled in answer and he felt bolder.

"Yes."

Harry pointed at the mill, and the smokestack that he thought he could see from every part of town. Each day, it spewed smoke and vapor up into the air, which would sink down to hang low over the village. "I thought you said they closed it down."

"They did right after the war, sold off all the houses. They sold it a few years ago and opened it again."

'What does it make?"

"Steel," she murmured, "I think. I do my best to ignore it." Harry decided that if he had lived on Spinner's End for any length of time, he would have done his best to ignore it too.

"There's a bridge over this way, I used to fish underneath it." She led him to a crumbling concrete road bridge and leaned against the columns holding it up. When he sat down with his back to the column, she slid slowly down beside him. "I stayed here a few weeks every summer until my aunt died."

"How did she die?" he asked, and then thought better of the question. "I mean…"

"Pneumonia, before sixth year. My uncle died right before I started at Hogwarts experimenting with charms."

"I'm sorry."

"For their deaths, or for asking?" She picked up a flat stone and examined it. "They left it to me, had no children." A flick of her wrist sent the stone skimming across the slow moving river. "My dad hasn't quite forgiven them for that."

"Not having kids?"

"For leaving me this place. Actually, I don't think he forgave his brother for marrying a Muggle-born girl and moving here in the first place."

Harry favored her with a sidelong glance. "Did that have anything to do with why he married her?"

She grinned at him. "It had a lot to do with it." Her smile turned sad, "but they made up before mum and dad had me."

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

"And your family?" she asked tentatively. "If you can tell me."

"I guess I can. My parents died when I was one, same person cast the killing curse on them as tried to cast it on me. My mother's Muggle sister and her husband raised me." He wasn't going to say anymore.

It was her turn. "I'm sorry."

He tried to skip a rock across the water, but it plunged beneath the surface.

"It's okay, it's not like you did anything."

* * *

It wasn't for another week that either wanted to sneak out again. The combination of their mutual prying and exhaustion from taking every commission that crossed Eileen's breakfast table kept them at home in their beds late each night.

When they did creep out of the house, they didn't head for the bridge, but instead kept walking past it, meandering with the river. They walked side by side, and she slipped her hand into his again. "Your hands are cold, Harry," she muttered to him as they walked.

"So are yours."

"Yes." She wrinkled her nose. "I don't like winter much"

Ever since he had been eleven, winter to him meant Hogwarts, and the Christmas Holidays, having the school all to himself. It was the summers he despised. "I don't mind it."

She ran a hand up his arm. "I'd like it better if we were sitting in front of the fireplace with hot tea."

"I wouldn't mind that either."

There was a thin film of ice along the edge of the river, but the middle ran sluggishly. In spring it would swell and run faster. The ground crunched with frost as they walked.

He gripped her hand and rubbed her fingers with his thumb, "it's not really winter anymore, it's March." But it felt like winter, even if she didn't say it.

A cold breeze whipped by them, and she curled up against him for warmth. He draped his arm around her shoulders and tucked her coat tighter around her. She smiled up at him. before he could smile back, Eileen slipped up under his arm and kissed him lightly on the lips and slipped back down again.

He blinked at her, too surprised to do anything else. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, looking at him wide eyed.

"No, no, it's okay," it was more than okay, he just couldn't think right then how much more. He drew her closer, and they turned for home, not sure what else to do just then.

T

* * *

he next evening, they didn't go out walking. Instead, Eileen lit a fire, and they curled up on the kitchen floor, on top of pillows pilfered from Harry's transfigured bed. Every time Eileen saw that bed, she gave it a tight smile. The first time, she snickered at it, with the pink flowered comforter, and Harry snippily asked if she could do better. She replied that it didn't matter whether or not she could do better, only that he could not.

"It's a fine bed!" he had exclaimed.

"It's a fine old lady's bed," she had shot back.

That evening, however, it didn't look like a bed that belonged to any particular type of person, because it had been denuded, and all of its normal attire was tucked into a nest in the kitchen, with a boy, a girl, and two chipped mugs of tea.

Harry took his turn to steal a kiss from her, as he handed her his tea. She pulled him down and off balance, kissing him back, and taking him by surprise. "Be careful, I might spill the tea," he burst out.

"Put it down then," she retorted unfazed.

He laughed at her and she wrinkled her nose. It was easy to forget that he had left behind a battle, with Fred dead, and Remus and Tonks dead, and their son, his godson, alive. He knew everything that had happened, but he felt as separated from Ron and Hermione as from Remus. He hadn't been around for long enough for it to sink in. It didn't feel like time to mourn.

It was hard to concentrate on what he left behind when he was curled up next too Eileen, so he didn't try. It was very hard indeed to remember that this woman's as yet nonexistent son had died in that world he had left behind was almost impossible. He had trouble even remembering that she was Snape's mother.

He had been willing to die, had expected to die for the world he had left behind, but it felt like a dream, distant from what he was living then. That sort of peace was what he had fought for, and he enjoyed it with little more than subconscious guilt. It didn't seem to matter as much if he never went home.

He grinned at her, and leaned in to kiss him again. The firelight flickered warmly, and he said his goodbyes to winter, waiting for spring. "What would you do if I never left?"

She tucked her elbow underneath the side of her head and lay silent for a moment. "I guess I wouldn't mind too much. I'd have to introduce you to the town."

He snorted. "I wonder how your town would cope."

She gave him a somewhat nasty smile. "They would cope, is what they would."

"You want to cause trouble here, don't you?"

"They don't like me here." She grinned at him with the same almost nastiness. "They think I'm strange, and they don't even know I'm a witch."

His hand pressed against his heart. "Your strangeness has nothing to do with being a witch." She pulled his hand away and held it, and he finished, "You're strange without it."

She laughed, but her face fell back into her customary sullen lines. She didn't mean to appear sullen or bad tempered, that was just her normal expression. "They would call you as strange as I am."

He kissed her neck and then her ear. "Well, at least I wouldn't be alone."

* * *

He tossed the comforters and pillows back onto the bed. A finger brushed the damp spot where Eileen's hair had been. Her shampoo smelled like lilacs. He followed the bedding, and pulled the covers up around them as she tramped up the stairs.

That night, he dreamed. His breath hissed out of his lungs as his mind led him through pictures of Ginny, kissing Dean, at Bill and Fleur's wedding, losing the ability to speak when he was in the room when they were younger, near death in the Chamber of Secrets, kissing him in sixth year, fighting with Ron.

He saw her back in her first year with smoke coming out of her ears from pepperup potion, and he smiled as he slept, thinking as he did that it suited her, his perfect Gryffindor girl, brave and loving.

Yet when he awoke, he remembered nothing of his dreams, nothing of the red hair spread across his pillow in his dream, or of the gnawing sense of longing. All that he forgot when he woke, feeling only that something was missing, and he couldn't quite grasp it.

* * *

Some days blazed hotter than the summer he had left behind, but others blew in as cold as winter, leaving no hint that spring was at hand, and that the day before they had opened all their windows to breathe. The weather couldn't settle on whether spring had come, or even if they would have a spring instead of just a long summer.

Eileen griped and moaned while Harry listened patiently, mostly ignoring her. As they waited for the weather to settle into its season, Harry wondered in the back of his mind when Eileen would marry and have Snape, when Tobias, a man he didn't like much from what he'd seen, would strike her fancy.

Smiling at her over their cauldrons, he marveled at the way life had led him there, brewing potions, something he didn't enjoy terribly, even when it didn't involve Snape, with Snape's mother. He suddenly missed Neville, who would certainly have made things more interesting.

As he mused, Eileen turned her eyes away from her softly simmering cauldron to gaze out the window at the April morning and made herself a resolution. She faced him again, smiled back at him, and made her plans.

* * *

After dinner, as Harry cleaned up, she covered his hand with hers. Her eyes narrowed as she smiled him. "Come up with me?"

Harry stared at her, unable to comprehend what she meant, but also knowing exactly what she meant. His hand turned clammy beneath hers as he began to sweat. His stomach twisted and then disappeared as he wondered where on earth his tongue had gotten itself to.

Eileen looked down, clutching his hand nervously. "I mean…" As she looked up at him, her eyes grew wide.

Before he knew it, the word had burst from him. "Yes!"

Her face lit up. "Oh, good." Suddenly she looked horrified. "I didn't mean to say that."

He grinned at her, beginning to find his feet again. "It's alright, I know what you meant."

Her lips curved up again into a smile. Her hand slipped into the one she had pinioned to the kitchen counter. She held it up high like a trophy, but let him pull it down to kiss her hand. Slowly, she led him up the stares and to the door farthest from the steps. The doorknob creaked as she turned it, pulling it open.

"I hope you know I've never done this before Eileen," he murmured.

"Don't worry," she laughed, "neither have I." As she closed the door behind them, Harry could hear a nightingale through the open window.

* * *

A lark sang outside the window and the sun streamed in warming the shabby bedroom, lighting the scuffs on the threadbare grey comforter. Harry awoke slowly, with Eileen stroking his cheek. "Good morning," he mumbled sleepily.

"Morning, Harry." Even as she spoke, he felt a sudden distance from her. The time he had left behind was suddenly present with a sharp clarity before it faded away again. He smiled at her, but she suddenly paled. Her hand scrabbled around on the bedside table before she plucked her wand up from it. "_Ostendo parvulus_," she muttered nervously.

Harry felt queasy, suddenly as worried as she. A thin band of gold light connected the wand to her abdomen, or more precisely, her womb. She glowed with the same light before she yanked the wand away the light twisted up into the wand. She stared at him wide eyed.

His mind began to buzz. She was pregnant, after one night, and he... He felt sick. His head spun and he wracked his brain for everything he had heard about that spell. The light had gone back into the wand when she released it. She was pregnant with a boy.

His organs seemed to dissolve inside him. The sudden way he had remembered his own time came back to him. This child would be born in 1960, or the very end of 1959, but he suspected that he would be born on January 9th, 1960, one year after he had come.

A horrible realization struck him. "I know why I was supposed to come!"

"What are you talking about, I am pregnant and you tell me you know why you came?" Tear gathered in her eyes, and she considered throttling him.

His hand shook as he took hers with it. "I had to come to father this child."

Her eyes widened further. "What do you know about this child?" she demanded.

"He… will be important." He smiled at her halfheartedly, trying to compose himself. "His name's Severus Snape."

"Snape!" She looked at him as if he had gone insane.

"He was one of my professors at Hogwarts," his head spun. "He went to school with my father, he's saved my life." It hurt to admit the last part, but it was a small pain next to the sharp, shocking pain that Snape was his son.

She glowered at him, as baleful as a dementor. "You're going back now, aren't you?" she snarled. When he nodded, she hissed, "Then go, get out of my house!" Her anger was spoiled with a sniffle.

He came close to her and laid a hand over the place where his son was. She didn't move away as he closed his eyes. Focusing on Snape has he had been when he first met him, and then as he had seen him in Snape's pensieve, he murmured, "_occulto verum_" He spoke it again, louder, "_occulto verum_." He yelled it, "_occulto verum_!" Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought it fit that Snape was under a glamour with the word _occulto_ in it.

Glamours were strange things. They couldn't copy people like polyjuice potion, but they lasted longer. He had never seen himself casting the one he had just cast. It was used to disguise a child's genetic heritage. What had looked like him in Severus Snape would look like Tobias. With a jolt, he realized that given how strongly both Snapes resembled each other, Severus Snape likely looked quite a bit like him under the glamour.

He toppled over as a strange unreality settled over him. Very few people used glamours; they took too much power. Potions were less trouble, even fiddly ones like polyjuice. As the magic left him, he grew weak, but he raised his head. "I hate to do this to you."

"Oh I bet you do." Her words left her in a low roar, and she wished she had strangled him.

"If you marry Tobias Snape-" she cut him off with a gesture, furiously, but he drove on. "If you marry Tobias Snape and name this boy Severus, I can promise that he will die a hero."

Her eyes looked at him as if she wanted to turn him to molten lead. "Get out of my house!" She stormed out of the bedroom, and left him alone to stagger to his feet and dress clumsily.

Dressed once more in the tee shirt and trainers he had arrived in, he Apparated away to the edge of the Hogwarts grounds.

* * *

Standing at the edge of the grounds was a familiar figure with a pointed purple hat and flowing spangled robes. Albus Dumbledore waited to meet him. "Back again, young man?"

"Dumbledore!"

"I didn't believe we had met," he winked at Harry, but his eyes didn't sparkle. "Except for when I saw you in the Forest."

Harry stretched himself as tall as he could. "You won't meet me until 1981, Professor, but you have to trust me. I can't tell you much, because I'm not from now."

Dumbledore nodded, the sparkle back. "I'm sure you don't want to cause a paradox."

Harry nodded. Hermione told him all of the dreadful things that could happen when wizards messed with time. "In 1998, you'll have a chance to send me back in time to January 9th of this year." I have to tell you that I am the father of Severus Snape, and I need you to send me back in time so I can father him." Harry gave him a sad smile. "You won't have met him yet either." He turned towards the Forbidden Forest. "Bye professor, I have to go back now."

Dumbledore waved to him as he rain for the place that would take him back. Harry wished that he could stay and talk with Dumbledore just one more time, but hat would he say to him? This Dumbledore didn't remember him.

As searched for the right place, he loped through the Forbidden Forest, trying to absorb what he had learned and prepare himself again to face Voldemort, hopefully for the last time. Lying face down in the dirt, he watched the sun rise and set thousands of times out of the corner of his eye in one moment.

* * *

The sun sat low in the sky when Eileen saw Tobias Snape returning home from the mill. Leaping up, she thundered down the stairs and out the door, past her safely de-transfigured couch. In her haste, she almost ran into him. "Snape!" she called, and he stopped. "Tobias."

"Hello, Eileen," he spoke like dirty oil and she tried not to shudder.

Her smile was frosty when she spoke, her voice tight and angry. "You want me Snape? You think you love me?"

He nodded, obviously trying to spot a trap. She took a deep breath. Anger had taken her this far. "Then come." And she took his hand to lead him inside and up to her room.


	4. The Snake Foiled

Chapter Four The Snake Foiled

Severus bit down on the caplet in his mouth, releasing the anti-venom he kept for just the situation he found himself in. As he fell to the ground of the Shrieking Shack, he tried not to smile. He was going to survive, and the Dark Lord wouldn't even know it.

He waited until Potter had left and pulled himself to his feet and balled up a bundle of cloth at his throat. Thankfully the snake's fangs had missed his veins and arteries, or he would have already been dead.

Hobbling to the rotting bed, he collapsed, blood loss making him weak. He pressed the wad of cloth from the bottom of his robe tight to his throat. There was nothing for him to do except wait for the battle to be over, and hope the light side won, and that Potter had told them to find his body. He could hardly walk, and blood seeped from his neck.

* * *

After Harry spoke with Dumbledore for the last time, he left Ron and Hermione behind and told them to go back to Gryffindor tower. Instead, he headed for the Shrieking Shack.

Prodding the knot with a nearby stick, which he had come to believe was kept there for just that purpose, he trudged down the tunnel. It seemed odd, this pilgrimage to a man whom he had just sired a day before. The flask full of Snape's memories thunked against his thigh, stuffed into a jeans pocket. He snorted. At least the man had liked his grandmother, even if he didn't know it.

As the tunnel opened, he gazed at the bloody pool where Snape had been. "Potter!" Harry's heart stopped for a moment, and then started beating again at twice the speed it had been before.

His eyes rolled around his head, twisting to the bed. "You're alive!"

Snape almost took points for stating the supremely obvious. Instead, he raised an eyebrow. "You're supposed to be dead as well."

"Sorry to disappoint." Harry felt blood flood his face. The strange and wonderful three months he had spent away from this time had dimmed his memories of Snape's sheer unpleasantness. He wished he could just turn around and flee back to Hogwarts without speaking to him.

"Tell me, you incompetent fool, is the Dark Lord dead?" The question was rhetorical. Snape knew Voldemort couldn't be dead if Potter was not.

Harry nodded, surprising him. "Voldemort managed to destroy the horcrux without killing me." He held up his hair to reveal his normal looking lightening shaped scar.

Snape snarled, but Harry suspected it might be the closest sound he had to a sigh of relief, especially in the presence of Potters. He also suspected that Snape had too much pride to ask him for help back to the school. "Can you walk?"

The air rushed out of his chest. "No Potter, I can't."

Harry felt terribly composed. After the previous day, he doubted anything could faze him ever again. He stepped dutifully towards the bed and helped Snape stand up, half carrying him out of the Shack.

Halfway down the tunnel, Harry stopped. "Would you mind," he panted, "if I levitated you out?" Snape turned to him, breathing heavily, and glared trying to catch his breath. Harry took his silence for agreement. "Alright then, _mobilicorpus_!"

As soon as his feet left the tunnel floor, Snape started struggling. "You imbecile!" Clearly he had his breath back. "Put me down."

Harry smirked. "Nah, can't carry you any further. If you want to get to Hogwarts, you got to go this way." The professor gave him a look of pure disgust, but didn't protest further. His neck had started bleeding again when he struggled, and Harry thought his silence might have had more to do with that.

* * *

The sterile smell of the hospital wing filled Severus' nose as he awoke. For a moment, he imagined the last year had not happened, and he could wake to that instead. He pulled the sheets up around himself trying to ignore the groans from his fellow patients. The bandage Poppy fastened to his throat pressed against his trachea, and he brushed it idly with a fingertip. The fabric was hard, crusted with dry blood.

Any moment, Poppy would cheerfully (far too cheerfully for anyone just after a battle) announce that she knew he was awake and that he wasn't fooling anyone. The attention of the whole hospital wing would be focused on him.

He was not in the mood to be the focus of a dozen students who would be quite glad to see him suffering, no matter how justified their glee was.

Sure enough, Poppy patted him lightly on the shoulder. "Feeling better Severus?" There was too much exhaustion in her voice for it to be cheerful, much to his relief. He scrunched his eyes tighter and relaxed his limbs in an imitation of sleep. "Stop being childish. I know you're awake."

Severus wished she would just go away and stop being a mother hen. His eyes opened and he glowered at her. "Do you interfere in everything?" His sleep clouded mind bypassed thought and went straight to reflex, which in his case was preemptive confrontation.

Though of course neck wounds with severe bleeding were something that she was supposed to interfere in. She stared at him perplexed. "Only in such minute details as headmasters who nearly get themselves decapitated by snakes." He raised his lip into a less than human snarl. She pointed to the blood replenishing potion on the table next to him. "You should drink that before you fall asleep again."

He sniffed the potion gingerly. "Who brewed this?"

For a brief moment, she considered telling him that Neville Longbottom had brewed it. It would serve him right for being such a difficult patient. "St. Mungo's shipped us all of their extra potions stores." In the Wizarding World, little things like a hostile takeover of the ministry and the ousting of the orchestrater of the takeover didn't interfere with shipping. Wizarding infrastructure was indomitable.

With a last suspicious glance, more for effect than anything else, Severus gulped it down. Poppy stood beside him to make sure he drank it, just as she did with the students. "And I would appreciate it if you could get better quickly. St. Mungos didn't have many extra potions."

He handed her the empty vial, barely managing a glare for her, and she shuffled off to tend to other patients. Severus had a moment to appreciate that the people in the hospital wing after the battle were the gravely injured and ill. None of them had the energy to trouble him.

* * *

Casting an indefinite glamour the same day he was to fight the climactic battle with his generation's Dark Lord was likely not the stupidest thing Harry had ever done. Sneaking out of Hogwarts when there was a mass murderer loose supposedly to kill him after all had to figure high on the list, but it still was a poor idea. The morning after found him waking up with heavy rubbery limbs.

Sunlight tried to stream through the velvet curtains in the Gryffindor dormitory. It was a wonderful bubbly feeling to know that no matter what happened the beloved Gryffindor tower hadn't changed. Somehow it meant that there was something still salvageable of the Wizarding World.

He didn't want to leave his bed. Something told him that once he pushed open the curtains, Harry was going to have to face the aftermath of the battle. The ministry had to be set back to rights; new teachers had to be found for Hogwarts. Killing Voldemort hadn't set back time.

Time. There hadn't been any the day before to absorb what had actually happened. Voldemort was dead. The omnipresent blight on the wonder that was for him the Wizarding World was gone. The task he had dedicated himself to completing was over. He smiled tentatively up at the canopy. It was a strange feeling. He felt lost, but in a good way, not so trapped.

His head spun as he raised himself up on his arm and pulled the curtains open. Ron stretched out dozing in the bed next to him, the curtains never closed the night before. Neville's snores rose from another bed. All of the boys were back in the Gryffindor tower, safe, alive, and relatively unscathed.

Yet the Death Eaters had run the school, had controlled the ministry. He had not been around to suffer though any of it. Given who he was, he would not have survived it, but it still remained that he had escaped much of the misery.

And he had three precious peaceful months away from Voldemort entirely, when the Dark wizard had been barely a sinister rumor spoken in the shadows.

Harry's chest contracted and he shot out of bed in the sunlight pouring in from the windows. Ron opened one eye. "What're you doing up, Harry?" he mumbled groggily. "It's not like we have class."

"It's nothing, Ron."

"Then go back to sleep before you wake everyone else up." He took his own advice and closed his eyes and had soon slipped back to sleep.

Harry instead slipped out into the common room. As early as it was, the room was empty as he collapsed into a chair in front of the fireplace. There was no fire in the grate on the June morning, but he gazed into it all the same. Whatever other pressing concerns he had left his mind when he remembered those three months. He wrapped his arms around himself. He was Snape's _father_.

It would be easier, he mused, if Snape had died in the Shrieking Shack. Immediately his stomach tangled itself with the rest of the mess in him. Even if it might be simpler if he could occasionally remember him as a hero instead of actually face the reality of the bad tempered, miserable human being that he had somehow sired, he shouldn't think that way. He didn't want him _dead_.

He pushed his hair out of his face. A quiet cowardly voice insisted that he didn't have to tell Snape. He supposed it was true. Snape wouldn't suffer any hardship if he never knew Harry was his father.

Yet there was something distasteful about not telling him. He was too much a Gryffindor to keep silent for long.

* * *

Minerva McGonagall sat ensconced in an overstuffed chair robbed from the Gryffindor common room. She placed a hand on the Headmistress' desk, and favored a single sheet of paper in the middle of it with a smug smile.

As soon as Severus was awake enough to do so, he dashed off a resignation letter. Severus' resignation lay in pride of place at the very center of her desk and she rubbed it lightly with her thumb. When the ministry was functioning again, there was little doubt that she would become officially the headmistress. The office already let her in. It should have given her an idea that Severus was more than a Death Eater when the gargoyle opened for him as well.

"Well Potter, Weasley, Granger," she began, startling the three in front of her, "Will you be rejoining us next year?" The whole of the school would be repeating the last year. If they wished, they could take their seventh year with the rest of their year mates.

Hermione leapt to answer, "Of course Professor!"

Ron's eyes doubled in size. "But I thought…"

"I think it's best if we thought about it, Professor." Harry looked up at her solemnly.

McGonagall nodded, glancing at Ron. "Yes Potter, that would be best I think." She waved them out of the office, and they followed Harry out.

* * *

"I thought weren't going back!" Ron exploded before they had even trooped their way down the hall.

Hermione sighed. That sigh was her sigh. Poor Hermione couldn't come to grips with the fact that Ron was an idiot. He wasn't stupid. He and Harry each had achieved moderately good marks without really trying, but while he might be quite bright when he wanted to be, he usually didn't want to be. "Ronald!" she demanded, "She's giving us a second chance! Why wouldn't you take it?"

Harry's sigh was internal. After all Hermione had sighed enough for both of them. Privately, he agreed with Hermione. He wanted still to become an Auror, and even if he had defeated Voldemort, he wanted to have his N.E.W.T.s. Besides, he loved Hogwarts, and he wouldn't mind another year, even if he had to take classes. His natural inclination towards diplomacy prevented him from saying this however.

"We don't need another year, Hermione, we already got rid of Voldemort!"

"We need to set a good example, Ron!"

Slowly, Harry spoke. "Hermione's right. We have the chance to get our N.E.W.T.s without Voldemort hanging over our heads, we should take it. I'm staying."

Ron shot him a look of pure desperation as only someone faced with the prospect of extra work could.

Hermione stared at him, outraged. "Don't you want to learn?"

Ron's shoulders slumped and he nodded. If Hermione and Harry were staying, he would too.

* * *

There was another reason Harry wanted to stay at Hogwarts, and she was smiling at him from outside the portrait of the Fat Lady. "Hi Ginny."

She snatched his hand as soon as he came close. "Hey Harry." Her smile was infectious, and his lips began to twitch up. ""I was thinking…"

"Yeah?"

"Now that Voldemort's gone, can we get back together?

A sudden sharp twist of guilt shot through him. He remembered Eileen and silently hoped Ginny would never know about her. He told himself that he and Ginny hadn't been really dating at the time, and that it just sort of happened, but he doubted she'd see it that way. His first time was supposed to be hers, and she was Ron's little sister.

He quickly covered it with a grin. "Yeah, of course." His chest hurt. He hadn't thought that when he saw Ginny again, he would miss Eileen that badly.

* * *

Madam Pomfrey opened the hospital wing door and ushered Harry into the room. "He's sleeping again, but he should be waking up soon." A glance at the window told her it was evening. Perversely that's when he woke.

Harry nodded, smiling weakly at her, fingering the pensieve he had retrieved from the Room of Requirement. "Thanks."

"I don't know why you want to see him now, he's never exactly civil when he's in pain." Unspoken was that he was never exactly civil at all, or that Harry had never gotten along with him. Or that he had no visitors until then.

"It's alright, I'm not expecting much." It was Snape after all.

Madam Pomfrey bustled off to treat a third year Ravenclaw with bad burns and Harry lowered himself into an unpadded wooden chair next to Snape's bed. All he could see of him was his hair, his forehead, and the bridge of his nose. The blanket covered everything else. If he hadn't been afraid to wake him, he would have pulled the cover down a bit. It was probably instinct that made him need to find something of himself in Snape's features, even if he had masked them with the glamour. Yet what he really wanted to see was some trace of Eileen.

Harry leaned back against the hoped the chair back. The battle the day before and his early morning began to catch up with him again, and the evening light soon combined with it to lull him off to sleep too.

* * *

Severus drifted back to waking as soon as the sun sank below the horizon. A hand reached up to pull the sheets down as his still sleeping mind tried to figure out where he was. He wasn't in his bed in his room at Hogwarts, and he wasn't back at Spinner's End. Finally his memories caught up with the rest of him. He was in the hospital wing. He turned over and opened his eyes cautiously.

"Potter!" there the brat sat, next to his bed, apparently asleep. "Potter!"

Harry started. "Snape? Good evening."

"What on earth are you doing here?" he hissed, wondering if he could still take points.

Harry set a flask on the table next to the pensieve. "I brought you this back," he explained. "And this." He sat a second flask down next to the first. Actually, it wasn't a flask so much as a red and gold bottle he had found lying around, but at least that way Snape wouldn't get them mixed up. "You'll want to look at those."

Harry knew he was being a coward, giving the memories to Snape to see instead of telling him straight out, but he didn't care much. He also knew it was a bit spiteful for him to give Snape the memories in a red and gold bottle, but he cared even less.


	5. Into the Pensieve

Chapter Five Into the Pensieve

Severus glared at the gold and red bottle on the table next to him. What did Potter want him to see so much that he would actually confront him to give it to him? Most of him wanted to pour the contents into the lake, just to spite Potter.

However, the rest of him acknowledged that he was far too curious to do such a thing. So instead of destroying the memories or viewing them, he lay in bed glaring at them instead.

He flicked his wand, sending his own memories back into his mind. The pensieve stood empty and inviting as he pushed the red and gold bottle under the hospital wing bed. For a brief moment he had to fight the impulse to shatter the bowl, recognizing it as Dumbledore's. There was something spiteful in that boy that no one else seemed to see.

He would view the memories as soon as he could hobble his way out of the hospital wing. He would see what Potter had to show him and laugh at whatever petty idiocy the boy had concocted.

The pensieve crouched balefully on the table. He sneered at it. It wasn't the man it had belonged to and he didn't have to respect it. He didn't have to respect the boy who had brought it. With that immensely comforting thought, he closed his eyes again.

* * *

The Fat Lady muttered darkly as Harry told her the new password ("Widdershins"). "You couldn't have come a few hours earlier when I was awake?" She thundered.

"You were awake, I just saw Violet run out of your portrait."

She muttered even more darkly after that. As he closed the portrait, he caught "still a wretched hour…" He grinned tiredly.

As he turned around, a raucous applause filled his ears. His eyes stretched out of their puffy daze. Ron grabbed his arm and pulled him into the center of the common room. "We're holding the victory party tonight," he whispered in Harry's ear.

Harry grinned wider. "Oh, good then." Ron chuckled and someone threw a Hogwarts banner around both their shoulders. Hermione sat near the fire. Even had there been classes the next morning, she couldn't have gotten too worked up about that victory party.

Ron grabbed a chocolate éclair and a butterbeer and dropped down next to her. Her hand ran though his hair and Harry snorted, leaving them alone. Neville waved him over and handed him a glass. Harry drank it in one gulp. It turned out to be firewhiskey and it sent him sputtering and choking. "Warn me next time!" Neville just patted him firmly on the back.

Four or five hands offered him cups of water, but he batted them away. Neville shrugged and smiled at him. "Want more?" Harry snorted again and ambled off to fetch a butterbeer.

A tap on his shoulder whiled him around and Ginny smirked at him. "Weren't you at least going to say hello?"

"Hello Ginny." Any lingering tiredness faded from thought. Laughter and voices pounded all around them as she leaned in to kiss his cheek. Something twisted again in his gut, but he didn't push her away.

His arms closed awkwardly around her and she kissed him deeper. "I hope Ron sees this," she whispered into his ear. He snickered, but he tried to do it kindly.

Voices boomed and laughed around them. There were even a few outbursts of musicless dancing, and it was during one of those that Ron saw them, but he didn't seem to mind with his arm wrapped around Hermione's waist. The party roared on into the night, and Harry suspected they might all be as tired tomorrow morning as they had been after the battle itself. Yet no one came to break it up. Down in the teacher's lounge, the professors were busy holding their own unexpectedly raucous celebration.

* * *

When Madam Pomfrey could no longer justify holding him for anything other than observation, ("I am perfectly competent to brew _and_ remember to take my own blood replenishing solutions, Poppy!") she released him, as she put it, on his own recognizance. As he bypassed his old classroom dungeon in which the Malfoys excepting Draco were being held awaiting trial, he decided her choice of words weren't amusing.

He twisted the doorknob of his office, across from his old classroom and felt it turn warm in his hand as it swung open. In his absence, his office had been emptied of any trace of Amycus Carrow. Boxes of parchments and books crowded the floor. He supposed that returning his positions from the headmistress' office to his old office was her way of telling him she wanted him to stay.

By mutual agreement, when he had taken the Defense Against the Dark Arts post and Slughorn had come to teach potions, he kept his old office in the dungeons and Slughorn had taken the office and rooms traditionally reserved for the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. He was fond of his old quarters, and he dreaded finding out what Amycus had done to them in his brief tenure as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

A finger brushed the empty bookcase across from the desk. It slid away under its own power, as if the bookcase were on wheels. Invisible behind the bookcase, there was a tapestry of Aoife the armless (who had wielded her wand with her tongue) battling goblins. Severus whispered his password ("foxglove") to it. Aoife winked slyly at him and a seam appeared in the tapestry and the rock behind it, and they swished open like curtains on a rod. When he passed through them, they closed up behind him, the stone moving like cloth until it sealed.

The students of Hogwarts imagined lavish quarters for their teachers. In his youth, he had assumed that the professors of Hogwarts lived in opulent, suites, and had some small pleasure dreaming up such extravagant surroundings. The tapestry door however opened on a small room with a curtained four-poster identical to the students' beds only hung with grey pushed against the opposite wall, a threadbare carpet and nightstand beside it. Through a door near the tapestry door was a shower, sink, and toilet. Next to that door was a chest of drawers and a closet. He couldn't have imagined it when he attended classes in the same halls in which he later taught.

Fetching his own empty pensieve from a drawer in the nightstand next to the bed, he poured the memories Potter had left him in the red and gold bottle into it. His feet brushed through the grey carpet. When he first began teaching, he had transfigured it from a ridiculous pink flowered comforter that hadn't looked remotely like anything else his parents had owned. He still wondered why he found it with his mother's personal possessions after her death. He set it back down on the nightstand, and hesitated only for a moment before diving in.

* * *

He landed in his own living room, sitting next to Potter, and facing _his mother_. He marveled, seeing her young, likely newly out of Hogwarts that he almost ignored Potter's presence. Her wand pointed between Potter's eyes, and he couldn't help a measure of satisfaction rising up in his chest.

"How far back did you come?" she asked, relaxing her stance and smiling complacently.

Potter smiled back tentatively. "I don't know what year it is, much less anything else."

"January 9th, 1959." Severus froze on the so familiar uncomfortable couch. The date she told him stood exactly one year from his birthday, and he suddenly wished to leave the memory, but he couldn't summon the presence of mind to make his way out.

"1959!"

"That's what I said, wasn't it?"

The living room and its inhabitants dissolved around him. It reformed with Potter again on the couch and Severus' mother in the armchair, a book and letter on her lap.

"Aren't you afraid your neighbors will see you using an owl to deliver mail?" Potter queried, but she shook her head.

"They already think I'm eccentric. It won't make any difference."

"You are eccentric."

To Severus' amazement, she blushed. "You really think so?" He found himself focusing on her, wondering at her simple presence, focusing on her every action, even small ones, like hooking her hair behind her ears. "You realize that if you stay here, you're going to have to work? I can't afford to feed you otherwise."

Potter fidgeted. "What do you want me to do?"

"How good are you at potions?" Little that he liked the way these memories were going, he had to snort at the panic on Potter's face.

The scene spun again, and he found himself outside his mother's door as Potter stood staring at it uncertainly. He heard shouting inside. "Go away, Snape, and don't you dare call that singing."

"Aw, Eileen, won' you come down 'ere and kish me?" It echoed strangely, as if he weren't inside the room.

"Tobias Snape, you're drunk, go home to your ma!" The words hit him like a fist, and a worm of suspicion grew in his chest. Had Potter, who had inexplicably traveled several dozen years into the past decided to use the memories as revenge for his insults to James Potter? Had he meant to show him that his father wasn't a paragon either?

"Won' you take me home?" he crooned. "Ma's not 'alf as pretty as you."

"Get out of here, you idiot!" she screeched, and he heard breaking glass and then a window slamming. "I know you're out there Potter."

Potter flushed and pushed open the door. "Sorry, I thought you were in trouble or something."

"No more than normal, I just wish I could hex him."

"Oh, well. Good night then."

The scene reformed around him Potter stood on a foot stool in the living room, cleaning the books by hand, and Severus' mother watched contentedly. The couch had been transfigured into a ridiculous bed. His stomach churned, seeing one of the comforters atop it.

"Do you like watching me clean your house?"

"I can't deny I feel some satisfaction at watching anyone other than me clean this place, but there are other reasons to watch you." Severus' eyes grew as wide as he could get them.

Potter stumbled with surprise, and she winked at him. "Are you flirting with me Eileen?"

"Why ever would you think that?"

"You winked at me," Potter smiled at her. "I'm surprised at you."

"Why Harry? I'm not much older than you are." Potter laughed. Severus cringed.

When the scene resolved itself, he stood along the river. His mother and Potter walked together holding hands. "Your hands are cold, Harry," She told him.

"So are yours."

"Yes." She wrinkled her nose. "I don't like winter much"

"I don't mind it."

She ran a hand up his arm and he son felt as if his blood had been left overnight in the freezer and his stomach in the oven. "I'd like it better if we were sitting in front of the fireplace with hot tea."

"I wouldn't mind that either." Potter paused in thought. "It's not really winter anymore, it's March." He draped an arm around her, and she kissed him. A sudden traitorous thought to the purpose of the memories consumed him. He found himself hoping Potter had only given him the memories to torture him with visions of Potter with Severus' mother.

A small voice reminded him that had not been his own intent when he had given Potter _his_ memories.

"I'm sorry," she gasped.

"No, no, it's okay"

Again, he was in the kitchen, Potter casting _scorgify_ over dishes. His mother stepped over to him and smiled. "Come up with me?"

When Potter just gaped at her, she looked down. "I mean…" As she looked up at him, her eyes grew wide.

"Yes!"

"Oh, good." Brief relief disappeared. "I didn't mean to say that."

"It's alright, I know what you meant." Potter grinned triumphantly, and Severus wanted to vomit.

Her lips twisted up smugly as they drifted up the stairs, Severus stumbling behind in a sort of horrified stupor.

"I hope you know I've never done this before Eileen,"

"Don't worry," she laughed, "neither have I." As she closed the door, the world spun again.

The room was dark, Potter's eyes half closed as Severus' mother leaned over him, a hand resting against the scars on his chest. Whatever they had done was over, and all Severus had to witness was the aftermath. She traced the scars with a finger. "Gryffindors," she told him, "wear their scars on their skin and forget about other sorts."

Potter gazed at her sleepily. "Maybe."

The room reformed, sunlit in the early morning. His mother was running a hand against Potter's face. "Good morning."

"Morning, Harry." As he smiled back, a terrible possibility flitted across her features. She snatched her wand from the bedside table, and Severus knew with awful certainty what was about to happen. She pointed the wand at herself and mumbled, "_ostendo parvulus_." A ribbon of light spilled from her wand and connected to her, lighting her too.

Potter's face held an expression of terrible comprehension. "I know why I was supposed to come!"

"What are you talking about, I am pregnant and you tell me you know why you came?" Severus wished he could choke the memory Potter as his mother's eyes .filled with tears.

Potter's hand plucked hers from the bed sheet. "I had to come to father this child."

Her eyes stretched unnaturally wide. "What do you know about this child?"

"He… will be important." He smiled at her halfheartedly. "His name's Severus Snape." Potter's words produced a sense of finality to the conclusions he had come to.

"Snape!" He remembered abruptly her distaste of Tobias Snape, suddenly not his father.

"He was one of my professors at Hogwarts; he went to school with my father, he's saved my life." A still functioning corner of Severus' mind admitted that was truth if only a piece of it.

"You're going back now, aren't you?" she snarled. Potter could only nod, so she spat, "Then go, get out of my house!"

Potter rested a hand over the place where Severus knew he grew, but his mother stayed still, letting him. Potter whispered so softly Severus had to lean in to hear him, "_occulto verum_" He spoke it again, louder, "_occulto verum_." He yelled it, "_occulto verum_!"

Severus knew the glamour. As a potions master, he had little use for them, but he knew them well enough. A shock traveled though him. Underneath it, he must look a great deal like Potter, and trough him, James Potter. The possibility almost seemed more terrible tan the idea of the younger Potter as his father.

Potter paled as the magic left him, turning the color of curdled milk. "I hate to do this to you."

"Oh I bet you do."

"If you marry Tobias Snape-" her hand slashed though the air, but Potter ignored it. "If you marry Tobias Snape and name this boy Severus, I can promise that he will die a hero." It felt strange, strange as sharing blood with the Potters that the younger Potter knew how to tell deceptive half truths.

Her eyes narrowed and blazed. "Get out of my house!" As she shouted, Severus fell to his own chamber floor and onto the carpet that had once been a pink rose covered comforter. He stayed seated on it, gasping.

* * *

The morning dawned hot and wet, a rotten day for a funeral. None of the students had slept the night before. Even the Slytherins who were less than thrilled at the way the war had transpired had not had enough stone walls between them and the other of the members of their house who were throwing their on noisy victory party. Harry realized vaguely that he was a bit hung over, and the pounding in his head and roiling in his stomach might have more to do with that than with the number of dead.

The tired students had only just dropped into beds (or armchairs) before the red eyed and puffy professors were rousing them to troop down to Hogsmeade and its cemetery. The corpses of the dead floated along between the students, who moved among them. Professor McGonagall strode in front, her wand pointed discreetly behind her back, keeping the dead afloat. The families of the students and the dead and the fighters who remained followed her, ahead of the students. Behind the students and the dead marched the rest of the professors, Hagrid towering above all the rest, his brother left behind in the Forbidden Forest.

It wasn't raining. The morning dawned hot and sunny, the air damp. Harry and the other students wore their school robes buttoned up regardless of the heat. Ron nudged him. "Mum and Dad are taking Fred home to be buried with Mum's brothers." With the funeral upon them, Ron had sunk into silence. Harry realized he had three months away from the deaths, when he didn't have to face that when he came back, Fred and Tonks and Lupin wouldn't be there. Dennis Creevy stayed at his brother's side. Even Colin, though he had always thought his fellow Gryffindor was annoying, hurt. He wondered if Colin would have snuck in if he hadn't hero worshiped him.

When he had snuck down the main street of Hogsmeade in his invisibility cloak in third year, he had seen the village as the epitome of freedom, full of the same mystery as Hogwarts, but without the teachers and homework. As he trudged though the cobblestone lane, the village looked instead as battered as the school.

There was one professor missing, and his absence didn't go unnoticed. Professor Snape had pled ill health, but most of the students thought he was hiding. No one who had watched Voldemort die could have failed to witness him tell Voldemort the truth about Dumbledore's death, and the ministry under Kingsley Shacklebolt had declined to press charges. There was no team of Aurors to arrest him if he stuck his nose out of his office.

Yet he had not stuck his nose out of his office since he had left the hospital wing. In his defense, it was only the night before that he had left. Unconsciously, Harry wondered if he had seen the memories yet, and if he didn't want to face _him_.

The bodies floated eerily into waiting caskets as the cemetery doors glided open. The procession swelled with the residents of Hogsmeade, and the living rivaled the village cemetery's other denizens. One coffin remained empty except for a mirror, a Gryffindor banner, and two newspaper clippings. There was no body of Sirius black to bury, and though it was two years late, this was to be his funeral as well. Harry peered at the clippings. One told the story of his escape from Azkaban, and the other came from the year before, proclaiming his innocence and his death.

Professor McGonagall's eulogy was mercifully brief, and Harry heard none of it, his eyes boring their ay into the head stones reading the names. The carved headstones and coffins shattered the unreality of death, and made him feel it as even dead bodies never could. The hot debilitating grief that had engulfed him after the Department of Mysteries returned full force seeing his friends' names written in stone.

Tears didn't come for Harry; his eyes were too scratched and dry from the pain for them to come. His fellow students more than made up for his lack of tears though. There wasn't a house in the school that hadn't lost a member. Voldemort's supporters among the students gazed on, some shamefaced and some defiant, but by and large completely ignored.


	6. Self Deception

Chapter Six: Self Deception

Andromeda Tonks waited by her son in law and daughter's new graves. She held Teddy close to her chest, his hair turning a lurid purple as he fussed. Harry broke away from Ron and Hermione, noticing her. Once again, Harry did a double take. There wasn't much stranger than seeing a brown haired and kind faced Bellatrix Lestrange.

She summoned up a smile for him, but it was a very sad smile. "I wanted to talk to you."

Harry shifted his feet uneasily on the scruffy grass. "What about?" He tried to keep any uncertainty out of his voice, but he had to give it up as a bad job.

Andromeda paused a moment before replying, and hen she did, she spoke quietly. "Dora and Remus' wills," she shook her head and closed her eyes. "It's distasteful just after the funeral, I know."

Harry wasn't sure how he was supposed to reply, so he just stood silent, waiting for her to continue.

"I guess neither expected to die so soon, Harry, they left guardianship to you."

Oh. Harry swallowed. "I, I," he stuttered.

The sun pounded down on them both. "If you wanted him, you would have him. The ministry would hardly say no to the Boy Who Defeated Voldemort."

The title, Harry mused, wasn't as catchy as the Boy Who Lived. Then he realized what she was trying to say. "I can't take him from you!" He stared at her trying to find the words. "He's your grandson! And I'm going back to school!"

Her face lit up and she smiled radiantly, though only for a moment. "Thank you, Harry." A gleam entered her relieved eyes. "It's been done before, have a child in the care of a student at Hogwarts."

Harry's mind supplied him with the image of a Molly Weasley-like girl with two toddlers and a baby in tow as she pushed her way though the halls, making her way to class. He tried not to laugh, and he mostly succeeded, only snorting. "I still want to, you know, get to know him, Mrs. Tonks." He smiled back at her uncertainly.

She set Teddy down in his arms, and he stopped fussing long enough to examine this new person. "Of course," she sighed, the anxiety leaving her voice at last. "He _is_ your godson."

Teddy's hair changed abruptly to a shocking pink, and Harry remembered when he had first met Tonks and she had done the same thing. A rush of gratitude filled him for Andromeda not dying filled him. What would he have done if he had been the only one able to take care of him? He handed Teddy back to her and she set him against her shoulder. He blinked curiously at his parents' headstones.

Andromeda's formal black robes, a bit moth eaten and unused, swished against the grass as she walked with Harry out of the graveyard. Halfway down the path to Hogwarts, Harry broke the silence. "Is Teddy a werewolf?"

Andromeda started. "Why? Would it change your opinion of him?" A trace of maternal defensiveness sprinkled her words.

"No, I just mean, Remus speculated…" his eyes widened in an attempt to prove his sincerity. "It's pretty important to know, isn't it?"

Her expression softened. Harry had been Remus' friend, and it was clear what he meant, even if he said it badly. "No, the full moon passed, and Remus' worries were unfounded."

"Oh," Harry said, "Well, that's good then."

She nodded and they continued walking. A short while later, she passed him Teddy. "I forgot how heavy babies were," she commented ruefully. Looking up at Harry, Teddy's eyes suddenly turned a vivid shade of green, and Andromeda laughed. Teddy giggled hearing her, his cheeks dimpling. "He likes you; he's only just started laughing."

Harry laughed then himself hearing that, and they walked in companionable silence to the front door of the school.

* * *

Severus stared into the mirror as if searching for any trace of Potter. There wasn't any; Potter had cast the glamour ably. He snarled at the thought. For a moment after the pensieve had expelled him, he had panicked, worried that his appearance would change before his eyes.

Only a small section of his brain was left to work logically, the rest of it teeming with the sheer weight of the knowledge of his misfortune. It was that larger portion that had him fleeing to a mirror. He cursed it.

He didn't often lose his head like that, or in any way at all. Severus slumped down on the bed, lying back against the curtain covered wall. Heartily he wished that he had never seen the memories, or that they could be fabricated. Trouble was it was difficult to convince one's self of something untrue when one knew one was doing it. Logic got in the way.

* * *

The Gryffindor common room hadn't changed, but with most of the students gone, it felt bare and dull. Harry sank into the cushions of one of the overstuffed chairs. The tears that had dried on his eyes at the funeral spilled over. They had their victory and all the elation that went with it, but Harry didn't want to feel it anymore. The last of the marauders had died, leaving another baby boy an orphan. Tonks' hair had frozen in the same hot pink she had died with. It wouldn't change again. The Weasley twins were not a pair anymore and pranks weren't nearly as fun alone. Guiltily he felt glad he wasn't George.

There was a missing place in his chest, like something had been snatched out of it. It couldn't be his heart though, that hurt too much to be gone.

If his friends had been there, he would be wishing they could just leave him alone for a while to mourn alone. Relief flooded him at the thought of Hermione wanting to talk him through it, or worse, Ron trying to cheer him up.

Yet he wished they were there, to mute the pain and badger him to think about anything else. Ron and Hermione would want him to laugh and smile, and find a new face to the school to solve and explore.

But Ron had returned to be with his family, at least for a while, mourning his own dead, though he planned to return in a few weeks and Ginny had begged to stay the summer. Hermione had to leave as well, to find her parents and lift the enchantment, but she promised to return as soon as she had found them. Dean had left to assure his family he was alright, and Seamus left because there was no reason for him to stay. Of the boys, only Harry and Neville had stayed.

A few members of the other houses stayed too; Tracey Davis and Graham Pritchard a fourth year and of all things a Muggle-born (a classmate had claimed him as a cousin) stayed for Slytherin, along with Malfoy, whose parents were imprisoned at Hogwarts. Susan Bones, Hannah Abbott, Zacharias Smith, Laura Madley, a fourth year stayed for Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw had the most with Luna, Lisa Turpin Anthony Goldstein, Michael Corner, and Terry Boot (whom both other Ravenclaws leapt to claim as a cousin). There weren't enough people to create a whole Hogwarts year, or even half of one.

Once Harry thought about it, members of the DA disproportionately made up the students who had chosen to stay. It made him somewhat happier. These would be the students who helped rebuild the school.

Neville dozed in a nearby chair, his head resting awkwardly on an armrest. The light sound of his snores drifted over to Harry, who thought he had the right idea. After the previous night, naps were in order. Bouncing from elation to grief hurt somehow, in a physical way, and he wanted to sleep until it stopped. He suspected that his friends and fellow students were likely napping on the school train, and he felt a sudden closeness to them, even as the moved ever further from the Gryffindor common room.

A muffled argument filtered its way into Gryffindor. Someone was trying to convince the Fat Lady to let him through. He wished whoever it was luck. She had been out of sorts ever since she found out she would have to continue her service over summer break, and that furthermore, any scorch marks she had acquired were low priority next to structural damage and replacing windows.

The Fat Lady's opponent let fly a string of incomprehensible insults. Harry winced, his stomach sinking to rest somewhere near his knees. He recognized the voice. It was Snape. Harry swore under his breath and rose from the chair, trudging reluctantly over to the portrait hole. The last living person he wanted to face with tears trailing down his cheeks was Snape, who was, however absurdly, his son.

The portrait of the Fat Lady swung open at a touch and he stood facing a furious, snarling Snape. He brandished the red and gold bottle in front of his face before shoving it at him. For a moment, Harry was absurdly reminded of Eileen pointing her wand between his eyes. "Is this your idea of a joke, Potter?"

Harry marshaled his defenses. Gesturing into the common room at Neville, he asked as politely and calmly as he could, bottling tears and confronted with an irate Snape, "Could we take this somewhere more private?"

Sneering at the Gryffindor common room, Snape growled at Harry and swept down the hall, Harry following somewhat hesitantly in his wake. The distance devouring pace Snape set carried them to the dungeons with little time for Harry to prepare what he should say. When they had reached his office door, Snape threw it open, and then nearly threw _Harry_ through it.

The door slammed ominously shut behind them. Dread pushed Harry's stomach further down into the region of his ankles. Wildly he wondered what people would say if he survived killing Voldemort, only to be killed by Snape in a fit of pique. Most fathers, Harry thought resentfully, had at least the advantage of age and supposed experience, and most fathers had _nine months warning_. Their sons didn't _spring fully grown_ and old _enough be _their_ fathers_!

Snape descended on him like a walking, raging, ink stain. "Is this your idea of a joke?" he repeated. "Answer me, you miserable, arrogant little boy, is this your response the memories I deigned to give you?" In misguided kindness it seemed. It was difficult to convince one's self of something untrue when one knew one was doing it, but it wasn't impossible. Never the less, a lingering, if sharply suppressed, doubt nagged at him.

Harry sucked in a gulp of air, his voice tightening with anger despite himself. Whatever anxiety he had felt evaporated when faced with Snape's simple denial. "No, you greasy git, it isn't a joke, it isn't even funny!" Harry glowered at him, surprised to find he was taller than Snape. "Do you think I would even admit such a thing if it weren't true, risk someone believing it?" The grimace of distaste on his features explained what he meant. He didn't like being Snape's father any more than Snape liked it.

A pair of pink blotches formed on the tops of Snape's cheeks. "You would jest about anything, Potter." The words when they emerged came out in a low, dangerous spit.

Harry laughed humorlessly. "I went back in time, I slept with your mother, and I managed to father _you_!" He straightened up, relishing looking down into Snape's eyes. "You saw the memories."

"You could have easily falsified the memories, Potter!" It struck him that Potter might think that was what he had done and regretted rescuing him from the Shrieking Shack. But why would the boy attempt such elaborate payback when he could just turn him over to the Aurors instead? Perhaps that wasn't enough _fun_.

Harry favored him with his own sneer, well aware that he resembled his own father all the more for it. Unconsciously it might even have been intentional. "Have you ever seen fake pensieve memories, Snape?"

After an expectant pause, he concluded Potter wasn't going to continue until he received his answer. "No."

"They're _obvious_ when you see them! Really obvious." Harry folded his arms and clenched his fists. "Besides, when would I see your house to 'falsify' it?" This was stupid, Harry thought, why did he even care if Snape believed him?

Snape's eyes bored into Harry's as Snape raised his wand. "_Legilimens_!" he cried. That was one way of finding out the truth, Harry decided, summoning up the grief he felt at the funeral to shield him as he discovered at Dobby's grave. Anger nipped just under the barrier. How dare he invade his mind like that?

Severus' expression abruptly turned from puzzled to triumphant. There could be no greater proof that Potter was lying then that he tried to hide it with Occlumency. Harry suddenly realized he had made a tactical mistake. He had handed Snape the memories anyway, so he let the barrier drop.

Flashes of his memories passed behind Harry's eyes, as he felt Snape search. He stood there, peering down at him, hands slack around his own wand, waiting for him to finish. At last, Snape cornered the recollections he was looking for, Harry brewing potions with Eileen, nagging her about buying a mortar and pestle, Harry cooking French toast while Eileen smirked, the both of them sitting under the bridge skipping rocks, Eileen teesing him about the transfigured couch, the two nestled in blankets in front of the kitchen fire, talking about what they would do if he never went home. Last of all, Harry saw him find a memory of Eileen and him in bed together. Even as Snape ripped himself out of Harry's mind, the barrier came down again. There were some things that Harry would keep private.

The brittle veneer over Severus' knowledge cracked and buckled, falling away. A strange sort of shattered weakness pervaded his limbs and he stumbled to collapse in his desk chair. He stared at Harry as if he were some being from the bowels of the earth, to terrible to contemplate in the light of day, his features frozen in wide eyed horror.

Harry sheathed his wand and leaned back against the wall awkwardly, waiting for Snape to speak, but Snape seemed transfixed. His skin had faded from sallow to wax-like. Harry wondered for a moment if the shock had killed him. He shuffled reluctantly over to him, and touched him on the cheek. Harry might as well have held a bare electric wire to him. He scrambled to his feet, eyes narrowing. A sudden perverse desire to see what he looked like under the glamour rose up in him.

For a few short moments, Severus had appeared vulnerable, but then he straitened up as he did when he loomed over first years in class, but his face held the fury only Harry, Sirius, and sometimes Remus could achieve upon it.

He tried to compose himself, banishing the horror so that he could concentrate on ire. "Why did you have to be so incompetent as to forget to insure you did not get her pregnant! What possessed you to sleep with _my mother_?"

"Could be worse," he remarked, "you could have not been conceived at all."

Harry pulled off his glasses and rubbed at the salt stains on the lenses with the edge of his cloak, thinking that probably for the fist time, he had completely blindsided the other man. When he put his glasses back on, he looked down at Snape, waiting for him to speak.

Severus visibly reigned in his temper. "You're a fool if you think this changes anything, Potter!"

"You already think I'm a fool," Harry spat. His eyes narrowed to green slits. "And I wouldn't want anything to change with us." Pure horror filled him at the thought of feeling paternal for this man, or worse yet, having Snape feel some need to fulfill filial duties.

"Get out of my office." He enunciated each word as if it were something he could throw at Harry to drive him out like his mother had chased Tobias Snape away with jam jars. Harry tactfully refrained from mentioning that Snape had dragged him inside his office in the first place.

Harry picked the bottle of his memories up off the desk where he had left it and stepped across the office to the door, but paused before opening it.

Severus scowled at him. "This makes no difference, Potter!" but it almost sounded as if he wanted reassurance. He needn't have been worried Harry would force him to acknowledge their shared blood. He had just thought Snape should _know_; he had thought it Snape's _right_ to know. Just then, he felt like the idiot Snape constantly called him.

Harry turned his head slowly to face him, his voice cold. "No difference at all." His hand on the doorknob was clammy and stuck to it as he pushed the door away from him. The door closed behind him with a faint click.


	7. Binns, Bodmin, and Balderdash

Chapter Seven: Binns, Bodmin, and Balderdash

Severus slumped in his desk chair, staring at the wood grain. The fury and disbelief that had sustained him through his battle with Potter had dissipated and he had sunk into torpor until a magical alarm on his desk began flashing, whistling, and dancing irritatingly. He slammed his fist onto the top of it, and it stopped its antics with a squeak. Unless he wanted to be imprisoned in the hospital wing again, he had a potion to brew.

He set the cauldron up over a burner and dug through his cabinet for usably fresh ingredients. He sat back down and prepared the ingredients, casually adding them to the potion, and stirring lazily. When he had first taken the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, he had taken a perverse pleasure in watching Slughorn slave away over the hospital wing potions, and had even asked him to brew a potion or two for him. Unfortunately, the other professor had taken the task with good humor.

When he finished the potion, he poured a dose into a cup and bottled the rest. He sipped it absentmindedly, flipping through a year old copy of "The Practical Potioner". A plate of chicken, carrots, and roast potatoes had appeared while he had been gazing at his desk and he nibbled on them as well.

A hesitant tapping at the door disturbed him halfway through his meal. He gulped down the rest of the potion before he answered the door. A mousy girl with brown hair and a braid stood there in mid tap. It took a moment for him to remember who she was, "Miss Davis."

"Professor, the headmistress sent me to tell you she wants to see you as soon as you can come down," she spoke very quickly. Her rushed high pitched mode of speaking was far more distinct than her freckled cheeks and oval face. "I'm supposed to bring you."

He sighed and closed the door behind him, his absentminded meal abandoned. As they walked, they passed the window he had leapt from, and he favored it with a nasty look.

Minerva met him at the gargoyle and the student scampered off. The new headmistress led him inside and up the stairs. "Ah, Severus, I wanted to clarify your future plans."

He examined her office. Gone were the spindly silver objects and the phoenix perch, and gone too were his jars of exotic potions ingredients and scribbled notes. She had once teased him that the only reason more of his students didn't crowd the hospital wing in hysterics after receiving their assignments back was because they couldn't read what he had written in the margins. In the place of his and Albus' possessions were bagpipes, a thistle wreath, pictures of her nieces and nephews (and great nieces and nephews), and a bust of Athena amongst the books in the bookcases. "I would understand, Severus, if you wish to retire."

"It depends, Minerva." She seated herself behind the desk and raised an eyebrow at him, urging him to continue. "On whether there is a position here for me."

She started. "Of course there is!" She tried her best to give him Albus' searching look, "We've lost enough teachers as it is, Horace is even leaving, says he only agreed to come out of retirement as a favor to Albus."

"I would have thought that he would have relished the chance to aid in the decisions regarding the reconstruction of the school," he kept his face purposefully bland.

"As would I," she favored him with a sidelong glance. "He must have relished his comfort more. Well, the point is we need four professors, and I would be grateful if you would make that number three."

It was his turn to raise an eyebrow as he folded his arms, a slight smirk playing on his lips.

"I should have realized you were on our side," she whispered, her voice thick with self reproach.

"You should not have," a large portion of him was sickened that he hadn't gloated, at least a little bit. "I played my part well."

"I should have known when the gargoyle allowed you to take this office."

"I take it as a complement to my acting abilities that you did not."

She fixed him with her shrewd gaze, "He knew he was dying?"

He nodded. "He put on a cursed ring. He thought it would be best if he could turn his death to some tactical advantage. And he didn't want Draco Malfoy to do the deed." He shook his head. "Actually, he cut it very close, less than a month."

Minerva smiled at him, grateful he hadn't made her suffer for it, but nonetheless quick to change the unpleasant subject. "I'm sure the curse is gone from the Defense post."

"Don't be ridiculous Minerva, that's a foolish superstition." He turned to the door, but stopped. "Did Potter ever tell you why he trusted me?"

"No, Severus," she leaned in curiously. "He did not."

His smirk returned, wider than before. "Then you shan't know."

* * *

Harry sighed with relief as soon as he was safe in his chair in front of the empty Gryffindor fireplace. His eyelids drooped as he sank deeper into the cushions. A terrible anxiety had settled over him the moment he found that Snape was his in some small purely biological sense. The knowledge that he would have to tell him had pressed on him, clawing at the back of his mind, waiting to burst forward. The telling itself, leaving the bottle on Snape's hospital wing table like a coward had not abated it.

Even fighting with the man, most of what he had been afraid of, had drawn the fear away. At least it was over with. Some unreasonable portion of his mind had feared Snape might want to acknowledge their kinship in some way. That at least was comfortingly not true.

The warm summer air mingled with his exhaustion, lulling him off to sleep, sprawled in the chair. Whatever fatherly duties he had towards Snape had been discharged. He could do his best to forget the whole matter, secure that Snape didn't want to remind him of it.

Neville still dozed next to Harry when he awoke, the sunset sky blazing in through the tower windows. The bottle poked into the small of his back, but a lazy lassitude pervaded his limbs and he pondered not trekking upstairs to the dormitories to sleep, but instead staying right where he was. If he fell asleep again the, he would probably awaken some time in the middle of the night, and he could slip on his invisibility cloak and wander the halls as he had when he had first come to Hogwarts. The halls in the deep hours of the night were probably safer than they had been in first year when he had found the Mirror of Erised, or in fourth year when he had fallen though the trick staircase. The only Death Eaters left in Hogwarts were safely locked up in Snape's old classroom.

* * *

Summer passed in a haze of repairs, midnight wanderings, loneliness, and the sort of boredom that only came from doing necessary, tedious, difficult work. Flitwick had shown Harry how to repair the many broken windows, and Ginny liked to remain close to him, levitating bits of masonry back into place. When he had reached the window Snape had leapt so dramatically from, he had flicked his wand sharply, a fierce jolt of satisfaction running through him as the glass rose from the floor and ground outside and oozed back into place. He hadn't thought there were so many windows in all the school as needed repair, and he desperately wished he could be doing something more interesting, such as repairing the portraits and statuary blasted apart in the battle or follow Hagrid, Professor Sprout, and Neville out to the grounds to tend to the injured magical plants and creatures.

A few days before his birthday, he had overheard Professor Sprout tell Professor McGonagall that when she retired ("not right now, Minerva, not to worry") Neville would be an admirable choice to succeed her. Harry had grinned as he heard it, and rushed off to tell him.

Harry had caught Neville straightening his tie in front of the mirror and scrubbing his nose until it was bright red, and when he confronted him with his strange behavior, Neville said he had to rush off to see Hannah Abbot. Harry had wished him luck, and because he alone of all the Gryffindor boys was there to tease him, told Neville to give her a kiss from him.

Ginny had told Harry after the funeral that if she had to be present at another funeral, she would prefer to be in the box, thank you very much, but though she remained at Hogwarts throughout the summer, she moped trough the halls, helping when someone put the task before her. If Fred had not so recently died, Harry would have called it sulking.

They didn't kiss again all summer long, at lest not real kisses, but she let him put his arm around her shoulder and cuddled up to him in the common room, and that was alright too.

When on the rare occasions that Harry and Snape were out of their respective territories within the school and they passed each other, they walked by without a word. If deep glowers grew on their faces and their strides became stiff, neither they nor anyone saw fit to bring it up. If Snape's eyebrows often met in the middle as he scowled, Harry refrained from commenting that they were Eileen's eyebrows.

Harry's world slowly settled into the new idea that Snape didn't want to berate him, or deride him, or throw him into detention, he just wanted to ignore him. Punishing Harry, or informing him he had less intelligence and character than the Whomping Willow would have involved acknowledging his existence. Actually, it reminded him of the way Snape had treated him after Harry had viewed _his_ pensive.

* * *

On August third, just under four weeks before classes were about to start, Hermione, brown from head to foot arrived on the school doorstep, trunk in hand. Atop her trunk sat a cage containing one rather irritated great horned owl.

Up in the Gryffindor common room, her trunk safely stored away at the foot of her bed, in the dormitory, Hermione grasped Harry around the neck in a hug closely resembling a stranglehold. "Hi, Hermione."

"Oh Harry, how are you!" Her grip loosened marginally.

"Fine Hermione," he gasped.

She let go of him, much to his relief. "It's good to be back you know; my parents are quite angry with me."

Harry could imagine. Not many parents would take kindly to their children modifying their memories, sending them to Australia, and then proceeding to get themselves into numerous life threatening situations as soon as they were gone. "I'm sure they'll come around."

"Of course, but I'm glad I'm here until it blows over," she smiled wryly. "Oh, and I bought you a birthday present." She ran off. As she hurried up the stairs, harry decided that if she was about to give him a book, he could always use it to prop up his bed. One of the legs had been cut short sometime during Snape's reign as headmaster. When she returned, she did so with an owl in a cage, and she hefted the cage up to show him. "I know she isn't Hedwig, but you need a new owl now…"

The owl glared disapprovingly at him in a way eerily reminiscent of Professor McGonagall. "She looks a bit bad tempered."

"Nonsense," intoned Hermione firmly. "She just looks it. It's why no one wanted to buy her, she'd been there for ages the shopkeeper said."

"Did he really?" A disturbing pattern was beginning to form in his mind. First Crookshanks, and then the feathered monster in the cage she had handed him, really if it weren't for the small stature of her acquisitions, Hermione would have been as notorious as Hagrid.

"Best I could tell anyway, I bought her on the way back in France, and my French isn't terribly good." She ignored Harry, shaking his head. "So, what's her name then?"

"Bodmin," Harry answered uncertainly as the newly christened owl's ears twitched."

"Bodmin?" As avid a reader as Hermione was, Harry guessed _Quidditch Through the Ages_ wasn't her normal choice. "Why on earth would you name her that?"

"There's supposed to be a wild snitch loose there," Bodmin fluffed her feathers and peered at him. "I always wanted to chase after it."

Hermione sighed in a long suffering sort of way and Bodmin clicked her beak. "Well, she's your owl now."

He laughed and climbed the stairs into the dormitory, setting Bodmin and her cage down on his bedside table.

* * *

A day later, Ron walked reluctantly through the front gates of Hogwarts. His eyes widened as he walked down the hall to see scaffolding and floating masonry lining the corridors. He ducked as one particularly large slab of rock sailed over his head.

"Ginny," Harry called from somewhere ahead of him, "Be careful with that!"

"Oh come on, Harry, it was four feet above him."

"Hallo you two," he greeted, meeting up with them near a pulverized arch that had once been a window. "Where's Hermione."

Ginny hugged him round the middle, her wand swishing behind his back to keep the rocks flying into place. "She's helping Flitwick repair the suits of armor. Why?" she asked, "Do you need a welcoming _kiss_?" Harry couldn't help grinning as she let go of him and puckered up.

"Have you been down to the common room yet?" Harry asked quietly.

"No, not yet."

"The fat lady still isn't repaired, so she's a bit put out about that, but this morning Peeves painted a beard and handlebar mustache on her, and she isn't letting anyone in unless they have a 'good reason for disturbing her in her misery'."

Ron snickered. "How did McGonagall take that?"

"Said if she didn't let us in, she'd drop her in a vat of turpentine." Harry smirked, reveling in the feeling of small school troubles.

"Well, anyway, she's sulking in a corner of her frame, hiding her face and moaning. You can hear her up and down the hall."

Ron laughed but continued up to the Gryffindor tower. Harry and Ginny abandoned their posts to follow him. The Fat Lady as predicted was hiding her defaced visage behind the frame. "Widdershins," the three chorused.

"Another student, oh another student, can't you just leave me in peace to dwell on my agony?" she wailed back.

"Wow, Harry, you didn't tell me Moaning Myrtle was now guarding Gryffindor Tower."

The fat Lady shrieked theatrically. "Students, I hate students, they're always to rude, and cruel, and…" she whimpered, sobbing loudly, her emotions seeming to overwhelm her.

Harry groaned. "Look, just let us in okay? We gave you the password."

She swung open huffily. "You tell the headmistress I deserve to be restored! There will be new students who see this of me first!" Her voice rose nearly to a scream as Harry and Ginny slammed her shut.

"So," Ron said, "It's good to be back."

* * *

Over the next few weeks, a few students trickled back into Hogwarts and the students and professors rushed to get the school ready for the rest. When the school had begun to look like its old self- to a thousand year old castle, a little battle between the forces of light and darkness wasn't much to get exited over- the headmistress called a staff meeting.

A few of Professor Trelawney's absurd poof chairs had found their way into the headmistress' office. Severus and the other professors lowered themselves onto them gingerly as Minerva paced around the room. "I've found the Muggle Studies, Potions, and Transfiguration teachers," she announced, "And I thought only common courtesy to inform you who your new colleagues would be before the feast."

Her fingers drummed on the top of her desk. "I have managed to convince Damocles Belby, Emeric Switch, Blenheim Stalk to teach Potions, Transfiguration, and Muggle Studies respectively." An audible sigh of relief escaped from the mouths of the collected professors. Severus had clearly not been alone in his fears that it would be like Defense Against the Dark Arts all over again, with a string of incompetent professors filling the post.

"Ahhhh," Professor Trelawney began in her misty voice, "I knew you would hire them Headmistress, the stars have told-"

"Yes, thank you, Sibyll."

Binns awoke from his daze, floating above his own poof. "Professor McDougall," he had to pause when several of the assembled tried to stifle their mirth with strangled coughing. "Who are these people?"

Minerva made a mental note to sack Binns… next year, if the new professors continued to teach. "Belby invented the Wolfsbane potion, Professor, you must remember, it enabled Remus Lupin to join us for a year." She wondered how the ghost's tenure had lasted as long as it had. In the portrait behind her, Albus waggled his finger at her back. "Emeric Switch wrote the text book we use for first year Transfiguration, and Stalk is one of the most noted experts on Muggles."

Severus held in a groan. Damocles Belby had been three years ahead of him as a student, and the only Ravenclaw irritating enough to bother with. Furthermore, he had devised the potion enabling _Lupin_ to return to Hogwarts as a professor, and for that alone Belby deserved his scorn.

"I trust you will all treat your new colleagues with the respect due them," she winked almost unnoticeably at Severus, "and the Daily Prophet will be running the new appointments as their cover story sometime in the next few days. Tales of the rebuilding supposedly lift spirits." With that, she dismissed the professors, and watched them file out like their students from class.


	8. Bombarding McGonagall

Chapter Eight: Chapter Eight: Bombarding McGonagall

**Hogwarts Hires New Staff**

**Headmistress McGonagall "We will be ready"**

_As the scene of the climactic battle between underground freedom fighters and Voldemort's forces (also known as Death Eaters), Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was left a smoldering ruin last May. "It was gutted, absolutely gutted." One student told us. "I don't think it can ever be the same again," another proclaimed. Yet Hogwarts, like the phoenix symbol of the order of freedom fighters who reclaimed it is rising from the ashes. Headmistress McGonagall has recently hired Damocles Belby, inventor of the Wolfbane potion to teach Potions, Emeric Switch, noted Transfiguration expert, to teach Transfiguration, and Blenheim Stalk, author of _Muggles who Notice_ to teach Muggle Studies._

"_Hogwarts students are scheduled to arrive on September first, as always," the Headmistress told a reporter three days ago, "We will be ready." At first glance, her statement may appear to be hubris, but one look around the freshly repaired school and her confidence begins to look justified. The school looks as if the battle, already being hailed as the most historic occasion since Halloween 1981 never happened, or at least happened several miles away. "Hogwarts wanted us to repair her," Filius Flitwick, the Charms professor explained, "She made it easier."_

_The Professor Trelawney, the Divinations instructor however does not share the other professors' rosy views. She didn't hesitate to tell reporters that she predicted a very bleak year indeed. "The school will crumble down around our ears, and one among us, I shan't say who; it will anger the fates, will surely not survive to exams."_

_Regardless of Professor Trelawney's dire predictions, the new professors seemed confidant of a good year when interviewed this week. "I'm excited to return to Hogwarts, and honored to teach," Switch told reporters. "This is the place I learned it all," Belby shared. "I lost a dear colleague and friend in Charity, [Charity Burbage, former Hogwarts Muggle Studies professor, murdered by Death Eaters unknown] and I'm humbled to take her place," stated Stalk._

_Returning Hogwarts Professors include Professors Vector, Babbling, Sinistra, Sprout, Hagrid, Hooch, and Snape. _

"_Despite (or more likely because of) previous headmasters and headmistresses' willingness to accept controversial professors, Hogwarts has a long reputation for locating the best educators in their fields," Headmistress McGonagall stated, "and I hope our new professors will continue in that tradition."_

Hermione passed the newspaper to Harry and Ron. As soon as she had returned to Hogwarts, she had taken out a subscription to the Daily Prophet, because as she explained, it was always a good idea to know what the rest of the Wizarding World thought. Harry scanned the article haphazardly and passed it to Ron. "Hey, Blenheim Stalk, my dad's his biggest fan."

"It almost makes me wish I was still taking Muggle Studies," Hermione told them wistfully.

"Hermione, you're _Muggle-born!_" burst Ron.

"Yes, but it would be like taking sociology," she explained patiently.

"Soci-what?" Hermione just sighed.

Bodmin glided down to the table and perched between the marmalade and the pumpkin juice with three letters. She dropped the lightest in front of Ron and the other two in front of Harry and Hermione. Harry shook his out and a head boy badge fell out onto his lap. "Oh dear." McGonagall clearly didn't agree with Dumbledore that he had enough to be going on with.

Hermione held up her own badge. "I wonder who the new Gryffindor prefect is," Hermione remarked wryly, but they didn't have to wonder long. A little way down the table, Parvati Patil started screaming.

* * *

Minerva's desk was covered in owls. As more and more of them clambered through the windows, they were landing on top of each other, hooting, shrieking and ruffling feathers. One, upon finding no space to land on her desk, landed instead on her head. "Off," she ordered, "get off my head." Instead, the bird dropped a letter onto her face. She had stopped bothering to even open them, wondering if this was anything like what Albus had been forced to deal with when Severus had let slip that Remus was a werewolf. It was fitting at least that Severus would be the cause of yet more chaos.

A great eagle owl swooped in and landed in the middle of her desk as the other owls scrambled out of the way. He stood up and gazed at her solemnly and she recognized the owl as Kingsley's. She took the letter from his beak, thinking this one might be worth reading.

_Has pandemonium broken out over there too?_

_Kingsley_

Well, it was good to know she wasn't alone.

* * *

Unaware of the chaos caused by his son's continued employment, Harry was finishing breakfast with Hermione and Ron as they busily scratched their orders on the order sheet conveniently attached to their Hogwarts letters with the words:

_Due to the upheavals of the past few months, this letter is quite late. We're sure that parents and students can understand why and we request forgiveness. For all students unable to make it to Diagon Alley at such short notice, please send the attached order form and the appropriate amount of currency to Flourish and Blots by owl order no later than August thirty-first for delivery to Hogwarts on September first. Students also are given a month's grace on uniforms and equipment._

Harry checked off the books he would need and decided he would get fitted for uniforms and buy a trunk later. Ron and Hermione's school trunks and their contents were enviably intact. They wouldn't have to give up a Hogsmeade weekend to shop for school supplies, potions equipment, and robes.

Tying an envelope with a request to withdraw money in it to Gringotts to Bodmin's leg, he told her, "Take this to Gringotts, and don't leave until they give you the money."

He set the completed order form to the side, gulping down a bite of scrambled eggs. "It's good to know I'm not the only one not going to London this year."

"From what I've read," Hermione began, and Ron grimaced, "Most of the shops in Diagon Alley are hoping we won't descend on them in droves like most years, they're still making repairs."

"George is up and running," Ron commented, "and he's thinking of hiring someone. Lee's working there right now, just to help out, but he's got his own news show on the Wizarding Wireless."

"That's cool," replied Harry, and well deserved.

"How's George holding up?" Hermione asked, letting her hand unconsciously drift onto his arm.

"Not well, yeah? I mean it was Fred." Ron answered quietly, as if he didn't want to be reminded that one of his brothers had died.

"Having someone around at the shop will help some," she said comfortingly.

"Yeah," Ron said. "Well anyway, George says a lot of the stores are still closed."

"So," Harry drummed his fingers, "we're going to have most of the students in normal clothes for the first month? Weird."

"Yeah."

* * *

Severus slunk up to Minerva's office, his own so full of owls he was contemplating holding them for ransom. It was the sort of despicable act their owners would consider right up his alley. The number of owls that had mobbed him as he ate made him more than usually glad he had not chosen to dine in the great hall that morning. He whispered the password to the gargoyle and speculated on how long it would take the students to realize she was using cat breeds, Russian blue indeed.

"Minerva, something has to be done about the owls. I have six camping out in one of my cauldrons. They're everywhere." He wondered how boiled owl tasted as he stalked in. Then he saw Minerva, sitting in the middle of a continuous stream of owls entering and leaving, howlers exploding and filling the room with the furious ranting of the parents of Hogwarts students. "Surely the few hundred Hogwarts parents couldn't have sent this much."

"Some sent two or three. One enterprising woman sent me six howlers and a hex," Minerva growled darkly. "I sent her back a very polite letter informing her that post hexes were punishable by a three month stay in Azkaban."

"I was not aware until now that so many read the entirety of a news article." One line in a Daily Prophet article shouldn't have caused such a circus.

"Or one person read it and sent letters to all their friends," her lips had shrunk to a thin line. "I've had sixteen death threats for you, Severus, two for me, fifty-seven letters calling for my resignation, and seventy-four calling for your arrest have found their way onto Kingsley's desk."

"You want me to do precisely what about this, Minerva?" Here it was coming. She was going to ask him to resign. She had to. He was too much of a liability, like Lupin had been. The irony hurt.

"I think we'll have to disguise you, Severus, a glamour perhaps."

What color there was in his face fled from it, an all the more eerie occurrence on his face than any other, because Minerva would have sworn he couldn't become paler. His sallow skin had become waxen. Misinterpreting his pallor, she quickly leapt to explain. "It's for your own protection Severus, it isn't that we're ashamed of you."

But the color didn't return to his face. Instead he turned and sprinted out of the office, his robes billowing behind him.

* * *

When Snape burst into the Gryffindor common room, a bad tempered snarl of "I am a professor, you pompous piece of pigment" insuring his admittance this time, Harry was just tying his order form onto the returning Bodmin's leg. She bit him as the portrait banged into the stone wall behind it and the Fat Lady shouted her displeasure.

Snape grabbed him roughly by the arm and dragged him up out of his armchair. "What the… Snape!" Ron and Hermione jumped to their feet, yelling at him to put Harry down, and in Hermione's case, demanding exactly what Snape thought he was doing, but Snape just waved their protests aside and strode out of the common room, Harry in tow. As the portrait closed behind them, Harry saw Ron send Bodmin on her way.

Confused and angry, with his arm starting to throb in Snape's constricting grip, Harry roared, "What did I do?"

"Nothing, Potter," he spat out as if the words corroded his throat on the way out, "You will find out when we see the headmistress." Nothing except merrily gallivant through time, sleep with Severus' _mother_, conceive _him_, and _cast a glamour_, in other words, nothing that hadn't happened almost forty years previous.

Harry pried Snape's fingers off his arm and made an aborted dash down the hall, only stopping when his adversary's hand closed even tighter, this time around his wrist. "Let go of me," he snarled, yanking his arm.

"No, Potter, we are going to see the headmistress." The retort that Snape himself was technically a Potter himself sprang to Harry's lips, but he held it in with effort. "You have something to tell her." Ordinarily Severus might have relished the sight of a bewildered, frustrated, and furious Harry Potter.

Harry tugged on his arm again, managing to pull Snape to the side and almost succeeding in topping them both to the floor. "Fine then," he fumed, "we'll go to McGonagall, but Let. Me. Go."

Severus released his wrist reluctantly. "Professor McGonagall," he bit out perfunctorily.

"I think you're mistaking me for someone else, professor," Harry shot back, pulling his arm out of reach before the professor could latch onto it again. Snape growled and it took most of Harry's will just to suppress the smirk trying to spread over his face. That growl meant Harry had won, at least that round.

The pair walked in slow stiff necked silence, neither one caring to share their mutually murderous thoughts. Potter kept shooting him looks of utmost distrust and loathing until he almost exclaimed that he could stop glaring, and that if Severus had wanted to do away with him, he would have found a way to avoid Granger and Weasley as witnesses to Potter's apprehension.

Some base part of Harry wanted to inflict Snape with the knowledge of their shared blood, even if he shied away from the kinship himself. His previous noble influences in giving Snape the memories and the feeling that the man had a _right to know_ had twisted. He hoped Snape choked on the thought that was so closely related to James Potter.

Harry and Snape were still fuming when they reached the gargoyle and Snape muttered the password to it. Harry snorted inwardly when he heard it and pondered carrying around a list of cat breeds to read to the gargoyle from then on. The gargoyle spun open and Snape pushed him up the stairs. As he climbed upwards, Snape prodded him hard between the shoulder blades every time he wasn't moving to Snape's satisfaction.

"Would you stop it?" hissed Harry, "I'm going." Snape prodded him once more, harder than before for good measure, but as he did so, the staircase ended and he opened the door to the headmistress' office.

Professor McGonagall leapt to her feet and stormed over to the opening door. "Severus, what on earth, why did you leave like that… Potter?" Her eyes flicked from one to the other with the same confusion Harry felt.

"Potter is here to tell you why you will be unable to cast a glamour on me," Severus snarled dangerously. McGonagall's confusion deepened, but Harry's complexion had started to resemble sour milk. "Come on, speak up Potter, surely you know the reason, you managed to achieve an Exceeds Expectations in Charms after all." In some still functioning corner of his mind, Harry wondered how it was possible to sound that disparaging of a good mark.

His mouth rapidly became very dry. "You can't cast a glamour over another glamour," he mumbled, heart sinking.

"And can you tell me why I would have a glamour already?" Snape's voice was deadly soft. Their private little secret, one Snape had been as interested in hiding as Harry had been would have another party to it. If Harry hadn't known how displeased Snape must be with the whole disaster, he would have accused him of planning it, just to get his revenge.

Severus clenched his jaw and gripped Potter's shoulder painfully. If he had to suffer through this little revelation, at least he could torture Potter with it as well.

Professor McGonagall just watched them through narrowed eyes, as if trying to divine what they were talking about from the way Harry's hands trembled and the way the muscles in Snape's cheek jumped. Harry clenched his fists and straightened his back, shifting a little to try to throw Snape's hand off. "Because I cast a glamour on you."

Harry hoped he would be allowed to stop there, but Snape seemed determined to extract the words from him in the most agonizing way he could. "What glamour did you cast on me, Potter?"

Minerva observed the strange spectacle, her gaze flicking back and forth between Severus, white faced with fury, and her student, white faced with dread. She hadn't thought that Potter would have been afraid to face down anyone after defeating Voldemort, after, according to his own account, walking to what he thought was his death, but whtever he had to say, he was twisting with the wish not to say it.

"_Occulto verum_," Harry gasped out, shaking Snape's hand off his shoulder and stepping away from him.

For Minerva, every word either spoke simply drove her to further confusion. Her eyes narrowed. "Why would you have felt the need to cast a glamour designed to disguise paternity on _Severus_?" she asked absolutely confounded.

So Harry told her everything, about the memories Snape had given him when they had both thought the other wouldn't survive, about meeting Dumbledore in the phantom Kings Cross, about being given the choice to go on or to go back, about finding himself on Eileen Prince's couch in 1959, about not being able to return until he did what he had been sent to do, about their strange romance and about sleeping with Eileen, and finally about waking up and discovering that she was pregnant, and knowing exactly who that child was. Harry knew that if he stopped talking, he'd never be able to finish and he would be back to answering Snape's snide questions, guiding him relentlessly to the end of the tale.

All the while, Minerva's lips compressed further and further until they were a thin colorless line. "Tell me you're joking, Potter, Severus."

Severus shook his head, a pink tinge showing in his cheek. "No, Minerva, we aren't."

Harry slumped into a chair in front of McGonagall's desk, while Severus noted absently that Trelawney's poufs had disappeared again. "I'm sorry Professor, but why would you be casting a glamour on Snape anyway?"

McGonagall didn't bother to correct him. "He needs to be disguised, Mr. Potter," she informed him, "We've been receiving death threats for having a death eater on staff. One man tried to send an asphyxiation jinx to Severus but he discovered it burned the envelope before it did any damage."

Harry's head was starting to hurt. He shook it, trying to clear it. "So, you were going to pretend you hired someone else, but it was going to be Snape under a glamour?"

Minerva nodded. "It would be comforting to know the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's secret for once." Severus snorted.

A wicked idea flashed through his mind. "You don't have to put a new glamour on him, I just have to take the old one off." The same desire to see Snape squirm knowing he was James Potter's grandson urged him to inflict Snape with his natural features.

McGonagall smiled tightly. "Yes Potter, that would work as well," she agreed. "After all, this way you can vouch for him. If he will look like you, and you both seem confidant he will, people will question you about him." Harry winced and Snape cringed. Harry hadn't planned for that, not that he had planned any of it.

Severus glanced down at Potter and hissed, "Well, what are you waiting for? Cast the spell!"

Harry nodded solemnly and lifted his wand. "_Ostendo verum_," he intoned.


	9. Family Trees

Chapter Nine: Family Trees

Slowly Snape's features evaporated, leaving behind a man who resembled nothing so much as an underfed, sallow Potter. His hair beneath the layers of oil tried valiantly to stick up in the manner that it did on both James and Harry Potter. Only a few traces of the face Harry and Professor McGonagall had come to associate with Severus Snape remained. His eyes continued to be hollow and black, his brows remained heavy, and his height hadn't changed at all. Harry noted absently in the part of his mind prone to noticing pointless details like egg in a furious Uncle Vernon's mustache that he was still taller than Snape. Harry would never be a tall man, but Snape was a shorter one still.

Severus surveyed himself in a mirror Minerva had hastily conjured for him and flinched back from it and almost let go of the mirror. The face he saw within it looked strange without glasses, and even more strangely sharp edged, but recognizably Potter's. His mouth would not have sneered in the same way he had always so terrified his students with, his chin jutted out in unintentional arrogance, and his hair attempted to arrange itself into the Potter rat's nest. Strangest of all, his notorious hooked nose had transformed itself, in an unappreciated ironic fashion, into the elfin point that had once adorned the face of Lilly Evans.

Even knowing beforehand that the resemblance was likely to be startling, seeing it in the mirror was still perfectly appalling. He passed the mirror back, hands trembling, to Minerva who vanished it. "I have something to fetch from the library for the pair of you," she informed them, "I'll leave you to talk."

Harry couldn't fathom what they had to talk about, or he did, but he couldn't fathom how to talk about it, so he just sat silently as Snape stared disgustedly at his hands. He leaned back into the chair, hunching down. Night had fallen, and he thought wistfully of his bed in the dormitory. His eyes had closed and he was just slipping off to sleep when Snape spoke.

"I don't believe either of us has anything to talk about," he snarled down Potter, enraged that the boy could so calmly take a nap.

"No," Harry agreed coldly, waking with a start, "we don't." It was strange looking at the face so much like his own and knowing that the man wearing it was in fact his son. It defied understanding that this man could also be Snape.

Severus folded himself into a chair next to Potter and tried to explain to himself again that he would be wearing the face he had just seen in the mirror for at least the rest of the school year.

"You might want to wash your hair," Potter quipped, "if you don't want people to recognize you.

* * *

Minerva returned, her arms full of scrolls, to find the two staunch foes seated side by side in moody silence. Well, she hadn't expected any better. "The Potter and Prince family trees," she informed them, "do try to come up with a _plausible_ explanation."

Harry frowned at the pendulum clock shoved into the corner that Fawkes' perch had once inhabited. "Professor, it's getting late."

"You can slink back to your tower after we're finished," snapped Snape.

"While Severus' words were impolite, they were essentially correct. You may leave only when you and he have agreed on a reasonable back story for Severus' new alter ego." She dropped the scrolls onto her desk and crossed back to the doorway.

Harry stared after her horrified. "Where are you going?" he cried as she opened the door.

"I need to discuss Professor Flitwick's lesson plans with him," she explained calmly as she left.

As the door closed behind her, Harry wondered why she didn't stay to help or guard them, or stand at the door imprisoning them, or something. He sat in horrified silence as Severus too tried to calculate why the headmistress hadn't at least stayed to referee their discussion. Finally, he broke the stillness, unrolling one of the scrolls. "We're looking for Prince males and Potter females between the right ages to sire me." He gestured to Potter to pick up the other scroll.

"Eighteen?" Harry asked flippantly. Snape growled. "Why Potter women and Prince men?" he queried less sarcastically.

"We are looking for those specific genders because I will take the Potter name when you agree to take the Snape one." He glowered balefully at Potter.

Harry smirked not at all offended. At last, he couldn't hold back from reminding Snape any longer. "Technically you _are_ a Potter." He refrained from saying that he wanted Snape to share his name about as much as Snape wanted to share it. That was actually very convenient.

Severus' scowled as he scanned the Prince family tree. His scowl deepened when he saw that Potter hadn't even unrolled his scroll. "Read it, you idiot, the sooner we've formulated a story, the sooner you can scurry back to your aggravating cohorts." Potter unrolled the scroll, tracing the lines and names reverently. "Make whoever you pick is closely enough related to you to explain this," Severus remarked, waving an eloquent hand in front of his new features.

"My father's father had a younger sister, born in 1933," Harry read, pointing.

Severus followed his finger. "Conveniently dead too," he mused, marking down "Elizabeth Potter" as a possibility, and going back to the Prince family tree. His eyes narrowed further. There wasn't anyone of the proper age even out to third and fourth cousins. Of course there weren't many third and fourth cousins. The Princes were a small family, and like Elizabeth Potter, conveniently extinct except for him.

Harry stared in wonder at his generation with something that might have been awe. "My father had a lot of siblings, wonder what happened to them all."

Severus glanced over and pointed to the dates. "Miscarried or died in infancy." Potter grimaced. "And if I could have some small measure of quiet, I might be able to find a mate for Miss-" he glanced at the parchment with the one name list of possibles, "Elizabeth Potter."

It would have been too much to expect that a Potter woman and a Prince man had married in recent memory, but Severus hadn't thought it was too much to ask that there might be a Prince man the proper age at all. Potter peered over his shoulder. "Bloody hell, there just isn't anyone, is there?"

"Language, Mr. Potter," Severus murmured. "That might have been an astute observation if it weren't written out in ink on parchment for you."

"Then why are you still staring at it?" Harry laughed when Snape snarled. "You have an aunt and uncle, here." He pointed at the scroll, "dead and childless. They left your mother the house."

Severus turned around to face him. "How did you know that?" he queried darkly.

Harry grinned at him. "Eileen told me." He tapped the names, "Ian and Catherine Prince. We're making up an identity four you; we could just make up a son for these two, and claim he's your father. Eileen would vouch for you if you ask. You _are_ her son." The last two words came out almost too softly. Snape was Eileen's son. It hadn't struck him before. That somehow was as important as the glaring horrible fact that he was _Harry's_.

Severus went very still. His eyes met Potter's, and he held them for a moment before he spoke. "My mother died fourteen years ago."

"Oh," Harry mumbled, shamefaced.

The quill in Severus' hand wrote down the names of his aunt and uncle and drew a line between them and one leading down from them. Aurelius Prince he wrote beneath the line. "Aurelius?" Potter asked bewildered.

"If you were in anyway at all informed about history or philosophy, you'd know Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor and a stoic philosopher, and furthermore that he was the emperor who came six before Septimius Severus. If you knew the slightest bit of Latin, you'd know the word means 'golden'." He paused for a moment, and Harry had time to note that this was probably the most Snape had ever said to him without screaming. "It also happens to be a family name." He jabbed his finger at his great grandfather's name.

As Snape drew another line from the fictional Aurelius Prince to a box he labeled Elizabeth Potter, Harry rolled up the scrolls and set them aside. "I didn't know Hogwarts kept family trees around."

Severus, who had been contemplating which name he would find least offensive to bear until such time as his historical redemption had taken place, started. "Hogwarts is an institution of scholarship. It keeps many records that are of no interest to students and therefore not accessible to them. He gave Potter a fearsome look. "You will not inform Miss Granger of these documents." Doubtless, the insufferable young woman's compulsion to find new pieces of knowledge would overpower her love of the rules. In Hogwarts, as in most places, it was safe to assume that one was not supposed to open locked doors, but Potter and his usual companions had a gift for prying into things under lock and key.

Harry nodded absently and Snape tapped his fingers against the desk. "Eileen had an owl named Nero, you could use that, since you like Roman emperors so much," he suggested annoyed.

Severus wrote down a name. "No self respecting wizard would name his son 'Nero'," he snarled back, passing Potter the piece of parchment, who took it gingerly. "You will take this to McGonagall. You will inform your fellow miscreants that my alter ego has been abroad and that he was educated at Durmstrang."

Harry leapt from the chair, grateful to have any pretext to get away from Snape even for a few minutes. The distance to the office door seemed too long even as he grasped the door handle and sped out.

After he passed the gargoyle, Harry slowed down. Glancing at the piece of parchment, he read the name Snape had scratched on it, connected to his falsified family tree. Sebastian Prince, he named himself. Harry tilted it sideways and wondered why Snape hadn't named himself after a Roman emperor after all.

Harry liked Hogwarts at night. There remained some visceral thrill to sneaking around left from first year. So many of his most terrifying assignations had come out of midnight wandering through the Hogwarts halls, but the terror and occasional bloodshed had always come far removed from the late night adventures, safe in his invisibility cloak.

It took some of the excitement out of the journey to be taking it on a professor's direction. Given who had sent him on it, he had no fear of running into Snape or another professor, and very little of running into Filch. Even without his invisibility cloak, he felt no need to slink through the halls, hiding in the shadows from the caretaker and Mrs. Norris prowling around the corridors. Instead, his trek to Flitwick's office felt more like a daytime walk, except that the halls were dark and empty.

Harry rapped on the office door and waited a moment before Flitwick answered. "Yes?" he squeaked.

"Could I speak to Professor McGonagall?" asked Harry as McGonagall hurried over. "Professor, I've been sent to fetch you," he handed her Snape's note and she scanned it briefly.

"Excuse me, Filius, could we resume this discussion tomorrow?"

"No need Minerva," he chirped, "So long as you saw nothing wrong with them?"

"Nothing at all," she assured him, "Good night, Filius."

"Night, Professor," Harry felt obliged to call.

"I assume I can conclude from your presence that you and Professor Snape have reached an agreement," she spoke as they walked back to her office, Harry trying not to drag his feet.

"Yeah," Harry replied noncommittally, barely keeping up with her quick strides. "We made up a few people, though." A sudden unpleasant thought struck him. "Err, Professor, what if someone checks the records?"

"Minister Shacklebolt has agreed to edit the records as a favor to the school," she informed him, her tone clipped. "Now I suggest you return to Gryffindor tower, Mr. Potter. It's well after hours."

* * *

Harry whispered the new password to the Fat Lady, who opened without complaint because she didn't wake up enough to do any complaining, and crept inside the common room. Quietly, he crossed it, slipping up the staircase to the seventh year dormitory and sank into his four-poster, sighing with relief. The lack of Neville's snores and a small groan to the side of him told him he hadn't gone unnoticed after all. "Why is it always you, Harry?" Neville whispered.

"Huh?"

"You're always the one sneaking back in here," he mumbled sleepily.

"Hush, go back to sleep, you'll wake the others."

Harry pulled on his pajamas and threw the blankets over his head. He didn't want to talk with Ron yet. He needed time first to come up with a reason for Snape dragging him out of the common room earlier. Right then however, his mind was still reeling from having spent all that time in McGonagall's office with Snape with neither of their corpses shoved in some back corridor. The blankets were warm, and he was too tired to ponder the implications of having come up with a usable story together without any blood spilled. Regardless of whether or not their cooperation was more a factor of their mutual wish to flee each others' company than any actual reconciliatory impulses, they had achieved a temporary truce. Of course, that truce was likely to have ended by the time Harry woke up the next morning.

* * *

Severus stalked swiftly down the halls, the billowing of his robes impeded slightly by the boxes in his arms. Minerva had pointed out to him only minutes before that a Defense Against the dark Arts professor who nominally had never taught Potions at Hogwarts should not be residing in the Potions Master's rooms. He had muttered and grumbled, but he had agreed with her, and so he was moving, in the dead of night, to the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's rooms.

Minerva had also told him that for appearances sake, he should leave his stores of hideously expensive potions ingredients behind for Belby. He didn't have much to carry up to his new rooms, which was a good thing, because each way he had to climb three staircases, his arms laden with delicate magical instruments like his pensieve. Even secondhand, the cost of a pensieve was prohibitive on a professor's salary.

He surveyed his new office, stripped of the gruesome possessions of its previous resident, and began tearing the bare necessities of an office, quills and parchment and ink bottles and his Dark Arts books and placed them where they should go in his new office. As he unpacked each box and found places for each of his belongings, he glowered at the room suspiciously. Somehow, having to move had never entered his mind when he had asked time and again for the Defense Against the Dark Arts job.

Last of all he unpacked the box with his grey rug. Knowing from whence the pink flowered comforter he had transfigured it from had come, he wanted to burn it. To satisfy his anger instead, he unfurled it and beat it against the air ruthlessly. Had it been its previous possessor, he would have broken the boy's neck. When he had laid it where he wanted it, he gave it one last firm stamp.

He surveyed his Spartan room and silently pronounced himself satisfied, though he supposed he would have to collect interesting objects to place around his office to maintain the illusion that he had some previous existence. He had never had many useless belongings to clutter his living space. Let Minerva accuse him of keeping half his potions stores around simply to distress students awaiting his wrath. He knew only a quarter at most were on display for that purpose. The rest he had kept shut away in supply cabinets anyway.

Loath as he was to ever do such a thing, he knew he had to follow Potter's earlier mocking advice. One greasy git couldn't suddenly disappear and another appear in his place without the students, at least the rare intelligent ones, concluding that the two might in fact be the same greasy git. On the way to the shower, he caught a glimpse of his new features in the mirror, and turned it deliberately to face the wall.

Equally deliberately, when he had scrubbed himself clean, his hands hesitating over his shrunken nose and disturbingly unfamiliar features, he turned the mirror back to face him. The features, so foreign beneath his fingertips, became so distressingly familiar in the mirror. When his jaw tightened, the image in the mirror's jaw tightened. When his mouth twisted in disgust, the image's mouth twisted.

He backed away from the mirror, trembling. His hands shook as he touched his face, sliding the fingertips over his forehead and cheekbones, searching for every little difference from the features of his hated school foe. Though the overall resemblance was disconcerting and somewhat nauseating, there were enough small differences he could cling to in his new visage.

* * *

Minerva decided, tucked into bed with a copy of Emeric Switch's perspective lesson plans on her lap, that she would need a great deal more whiskey than she customarily drank to mull over Severus and Potter's revelations, but that she had no intention of doing that to herself so soon before school began again.


	10. Stalk, Switch, Belby, and Prince

Chapter Ten: Stalk, Switch, Belby, and Prince

The next morning, the others woke up earlier than Harry. As they scurried around searching for socks and trousers, Ron glanced over at his sleeping friend. "Do you think we should wake him?"

The tower room soaked in the morning light pouring in from the windows, looked as if it were on fire as Harry opened his eyes. He had neglected to close his curtains the night before, and he could just see Neville through them. "No, he came in late last night," his fellow Gryffindor replied, hushing his friend.

"And it is," Ron began to point out, "the last day he can sleep in…" Harry woke the rest of the way with a start. The train was arriving in a few hours, and the sorting and feast would be just after that. The school year had begun. Ron grinned over at the friend he thought was sleeping only to see open eyes.

"Morning," Harry yawned.

Ron stared. "Well get up then," he called, throwing Harry's clothes at him. Harry tumbled out of bed and pulled his clothes onto the appropriate body parts. He ran his hand haphazardly through his hair, trying and failing to achieve a less messy state for it. As he straightened himself out, he followed the other two Gryffindor into the common room.

Hermione and Ginny were already sitting by the fireplace, talking about the new school year when the boys trooped into the common room and clustered around them. "So," said Ginny, "everybody ready for a new year?" She grinned, "And three new teachers?"

"And with Professor Snape in such a bad mood," Hermione remarked to Harry pointedly. "Do you know," she began, speaking to all of them, "that Professor Snape dragged Harry out of here last night, without even telling him why?"

She waited expectantly for some reason he might have been dragged bodily out of the Gryffindor common room and then returned so late. "McGonagall wanted to see me," he explained. "The new Defense professor's my cousin, she wanted to warn me." His chest squeezed. Though Harry had become used to lying to his friends, and more accustomed still to deceiving them through omission, he had never planned it out, or told a complicated lie, or told a lie that wasn't his own.

Even if Snape and he had devised the lie, even if it hid something that his friends didn't need to know, he wasn't used to it. For a moment, he almost wished he could tell them the truth, but the impulse evaporated when he remembered telling them the truth would mean telling them about Eileen and that he was somehow Snape's father.

"Wait," Ron asked, "isn't Snape the Defense professor?"

Harry grinned sheepishly. "Exactly, McGonagall sacked him, and then sent him to fetch me." Even Neville laughed a bit unkindly.

"So why did you only find out about this person now?" Ginny queried, genuinely curious about this sudden relative of her boyfriend well known for his longing for a family. "Who is he?"

"Well, he isn't exactly close; he's my great aunt's son, I think."

Hermione stared at him strangely. "That's close, Harry."

"Yeah, I guess," Harry murmured. "Supposedly my great aunt didn't speak to her family much after she married. She married Snape's mum's first cousin."

Hermione's mouth made a little O and Ron snorted. Harry suddenly wished Snape hadn't wanted to keep his mother's surname. After a moment of silence, Ginny spoke what the rest were probably thinking. "That must be weird."

Harry nodded thoughtfully, wondering whether it was weirder that he was spinning this tale for his friends, or that he was Snape's father, anyone's father, the father of someone old enough to be his father. "He looks like me," he blurted, and then added quietly, "a lot like me," he was his father.

Leaning against the arm of Ginny's chair, Harry ignored the conversation as it moved on, lost in his own thoughts. At last, he shook himself free of his secrets as the others were about to leave for breakfast in the Great Hall. "Hey Ginny," he called to her, standing up, "are you ready for the new year and all the new professors?" It almost felt like first year.

Ginny whirled back to him and then spat to all of them, "After Snape and the Carrows, I'm ready for any new professor." Somehow, her words soured all of breakfast.

* * *

It was Severus' last chance to dine alone and in peace until the term ended, and he took full advantage of it. The house elves brought him Belgian waffles with cream, fruit syrups and berries piled on them, and sausages and enough food for seven gourmands in compensation for missing Hogwarts normal morning fare.

The knife and fork felt odd in his hands, changed from their ordinary shape, his fingers shortened and the rest of them shrunken. He had never thought that more might be different beneath the glamour than his face. Strange resemblances to the Potters, both of them, showed themselves all over his body, in his hands, his wrists, and the shape of his legs. If he had known that he would be _walking_ differently without the glamour, he might have thrown a fit in Minerva's office and told her he'd rather quit than wear a disguise. Though, she probably wouldn't have believed him if he had.

* * *

As the students who had arrived on the train streamed into the Great Hall, their fellows were already seated, gazing expectantly at their empty plates. Harry glanced again at the head table at the new professors and wondered if Snape was going to give himself away with the hideous glare he was wearing. Ron followed his eyes and looked up at Snape. "He looks like his mother was Madam Pince." It wasn't the most flattering description of Eileen Harry could imagine, but the expression on his face did bring to mind the carrion resembling librarian. At least Ron hadn't thought of Snape.

The new first years, which because everyone was repeating a year was for once not redundant, filed in behind Flitwick. Their nervous giddy chatter poured across the house tables as Flitwick set the hat on its stool and read in his squeaky way, "Ackerman, Victoria." But as she shot up to the stool, which happened to be taller than Flitwick himself, the assembled students fell silent. The sorting had begun.

By the time Zeller, Xerxes was sorted into Hufflepuff, Ron was eying the plates with an expression suggesting he could eat them instead if the food didn't appear on them soon. Ginny, seated beside Harry, had turned her face into a picture of highly suspicious innocence. It was the sort of expression that the twins had worn only when they were bored and plotting mayhem.

McGonagall stood up to make her first attempt at addressing the student body as headmistress. "Welcome to Hogwarts," she began, safely. "Before the feast commences, I have a few announcements. First, I would like to welcome four new staff members, Blenheim Stalk, who will be teaching Muggle Studies, Emeric Switch, who will be replacing me as Transfiguration professor, Damocles Belby, who will be teaching Potions, and Sebastian Prince, who will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts." Between each, the students clapped, for some names more enthusiastically than others.

"I'm pleased to note that Professor Flitwick is our new deputy headmaster," the Ravenclaws erupted into cheers. "Professor Switch will also be taking over as Head of Gryffindor house, and Professor Stalk will be taking over as head of Slytherin house." The Slytherins stared at her and then their new head of house horrified while the other houses laughed and cheered.

Ginny grinned at Harry, her brother, and Hermione. "At last the Slytherins have a head of Head of House who shares their interests and concerns." Hermione directed her giggle into her hand and Harry clapped, snickering.

McGonagall's eyes swept the room. "Our caretaker, Argus Filch would like me to inform you that Drooble's Best Blowing Gum is now not allowed in the castle or on the grounds." A small, almost unnoticeable smile curved at her lips. "Without further ado, let the feast begin."

Food appeared abruptly on the plates in front of them, and for a short while, no one said anything, being as they were too busy trying to fill their mouths. When Hermione had at least taken the edge off her own hunger, she turned to Harry, and speaking around Ron, who had a bit of gravy shining on his chin, she told him, "Your cousin looks quite a bit like you, Harry."

It took a moment for Harry to realize what she was talking about. "Yeah, I know, it's weird."

Ron nodded his agreement, "but I still say he looks like Madam Pince."

"That isn't very nice, Ron," admonished Hermione, swatting his hand.

As Ron cried out, more from surprise and indignation than anything else, Ginny smirked. "To who, our new Professor, or Madam Pince?"

* * *

Severus had a difficult time deciding who was more deserving of his glowers, Potter, or Belby. In his opinion, Belby was no better than Lockhart, if perhaps more subtle. All throughout school, Damocles Belby had stolen the work of other students in a regrettably shrewd manner. He had become the wunderkind in several subjects by claiming the accomplishments of the students least likely to complain, those like Severus who were also working on more illicit projects, as his own. He had no doubt that Belby had continued the pattern after graduation. As far as he had been able to determine, the man had very little inventive talent at all. Whoever had invented The Wolsbane potion, it certainly wasn't Belby.

Though Belby still deserved the blame for patenting and releasing the formula.

Fortunately, Minerva had the excellent sense to ensue they were not seated in close proximity to each other. Instead, he had been seated between Filius and Switch, both of whom were feeling sociable.

"So, Sebastian, at least you and I aren't alone as new professors," Switch exclaimed, "misery loves company after all." Severus decided he didn't like him. "Tell me, I haven't heard of you, what have you been doing have you been abroad?" Severus decided he outright disliked him.

"Yes," he said simply, hoping Switch wouldn't press.

He didn't have good luck in that matter, however. "Oh? Where?"

Severus tried not to snarl something foul. "I was schooled at Durmstrang and resided in Greece thereafter. I haven't done anything that would be noted outside of Eastern Europe."

Switch stared at him nonplussed. "Then why were you appointed?"

Severus could have said a few choice words about his former colleagues in the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, but he refrained with difficulty. "I am an expert in the _theoretical study_ of the Dark Arts and their defense," he growled. "I'm more than qualified." It occurred to him to wonder if being a Death Eater qualified as theoretical study.

"I hope you will teach your students practical defense as well," Switch remarked suspiciously.

Severus' eyes narrowed, "Of course."

Eager to end the discussion, he turned to Filius to congratulate him on becoming deputy headmaster. "Thank you Sebastian," he replied, voice penetratingly high pitched, "I've been meaning to ask you, since you do look so much like him," Severus felt his stomach sink into his knees. "Are you by any chance related to our Harry Potter?" Severus decided he didn't much like Flitwick either.

* * *

Ron dropped his schedule after a cursory scan as if the paper were attacking him. Harry ignored his plate of fried eggs to take his own schedule. "What's wrong?" he asked before reading it.

"It's cruel really cruel to give us Potions and Transfiguration on the same day," Ron moaned, shuttering.

"Just remember we don't have Snape," Ginny intoned, as if it were her own personal chant, "just remember, we don't have Snape."

Harry felt too relieved that they were all at Hogwarts and going to classes again to feel too upset that he had two difficult classes on one day ("a Monday too", Ron was griping to his sister, because Hermione wouldn't listen). He was too relieved in fact to even feel strange that Ginny's new favorite sentence was what it was.

"Just remember we don't have Snape," Ginny repeated.

"They're new professors; they could be worse than Snape."

Hermione had finished eating, but stayed to watch them. Ron's histrionics occasionally entertained her. "Not possible," Ginny informed her brother confidently. "It's Snape." Ginny of course knew better, having endured the Carrows, but barring the ghost of Bellatrix Lestrange, there was no possibility of finding a worse professor than they.

Uncharacteristically, Hermione felt the need to add her own thoughts on their worst teacher. "Umbridge." Even Harry dredged up a shudder at her name. Ginny stabbed her fork ruthlessly into a sausage.

* * *

On all of the tables in the Transfiguration classroom sat overturned glasses with butterflies fluttering beneath them. As the class filed in, Hermione grabbed Harry and Ron's arms to pull them to seats in the front of the class. Professor Switch, a freckled man with wiry blond hair and an upturned nose, wrote notes on the board as he waited for his students to settle down. When they had all chosen a chair, he turned around and smiled at them. His eyes and mouth crinkled at the corner, the wrinkles revealing he was older than he first appeared.

"Since this is a seventh year class," he began, "and you have had an admirable teacher for your earlier education, I thought I'd start the year with something _challenging_." Ron and Harry, who like most students found everything about Transfiguration challenging at the best of times gazed sympathetically at each other behind Hermione's back and groaned silently.

"You'll be changing these butterflies and their glasses into potted buttercups," he told them, before launching into a long and complicated lecture on transfiguring insects into plants and transfiguring two objects at once. Hermione listened with rapt attention, as did Harry, taking page upon page of notes, but he only understood about half of it. Before he set them to attempting the transfiguration, he smiled. "Because this is a difficult transfiguration, I will award the first to succeed ten points." Harry watched Hermione who was bouncing out of her chair with excitement thinking that at least the points would go to Gryffindor.

By the end of class, only Hermione had succeeded in transfiguring her butterfly and glass. Dean had actually cracked his glass and had to ask for another one. Professor Switch didn't seem disappointed however. In fact, he appeared thrilled that anyone had managed it at all. Harry himself felt quite good about the lesson, because his glass had taken on an opaque quality, and his butterfly's wings had become leaves. While it wasn't pleasant to have an essay from his first class of the year, he escaped feeling slightly less like an idiot than usual.

In the hallway, Ron started muttering threats of bodily harm as Hermione regaled them nervously with how her buttercup looked too much like a daisy. Harry just shook his had in amazement that she was worried about such things.

The dungeon was gloomily familiar as Harry and Ron took revenge on Hermione for choosing seats at the front of Transfiguration by finding the three seats in the back of the chamber. Unlike Professor Switch, Professor Belby was almost late to his own class. He burst through the door, a stack of notes in his arms, only to slam them down upon the desk. It quite worried Harry. If he said one word about "foolish wand waving", Harry swore he would withdraw from the class.

Fortunately for Harry's future as a student brewer and eventual Auror, Belby began the class with different words. He raised his eyebrows and attempted to smile at them from beneath his mustache. "You're all in your second year of N.E.W.T. level Potions, so I hope I can safely assume that you all know that brewing is more throwing the right ingredients into a cauldron and hoping the result isn't poisonous sludge," he spoke, leaning against his desk. "The potion on the board is one that you have encountered before, but I would like to know which of you can recognize and brew it without knowing what it is. No potion can be properly brewed unless the brewer knows exactly what it is supposed to be." As he spoke, he ran his fingers through the short brown fuzz running along the back of his head and nowhere else. "You have until the end of class."

Harry smiled at the ingredients, suddenly thankful that Snape, who was Eileen's son at least in this, was so creative in his brewing. He remembered the potion from sixth year as an elixir to induce euphoria, and he even remembered most of Snape's adulterations.

He stopped smiling when Professor Belby loomed over his head to watch as he brewed. Harry almost spilled his ingredients, and he even had Hermione dropping the wrong ingredients into her potion, only to franticly correct her potion as soon as he had ceased his watch. Harry didn't like him. The man seemed too eager to see them make a mistake.

A lot of the time Harry should have spent concentrating on his potion, he spent instead watching Malfoy. He hadn't seen the Slytherin since the final battle. The months spent as a virtual prisoner at the school hadn't been good to him. His hair was lank, and his skin, which couldn't become paler, had instead taken on a yellow cast. Harry had heard that the adult Malfoys had been moved to a ministry holding cell just before school started to await their trial. Sympathy warred in him with satisfaction. Malfoy was still a slimy git.

* * *

The air in Blenheim's office was chill as he addressed a select group of his new charges. The rotund man with the proud grey fuzz beard likely didn't intimidate any of them, but he didn't intend to intimidate. He intended to offer some advice, and possibly, a bit of redemption. Malfoy, Nott, Goyle, Parkinson, and others, all with suspected ties to Voldemort watched him warily.

"I'm not here to punish you," he reassured them, "I just wished to inform you as your Head of House that it isn't too late for you to change your schedules, and that I would gladly have any of you in my N.E.W.T. class."

Malfoy, the usual leader of the group spoke first and with his typical imprudence. "I don't think any of us have any desire to change our schedules to accommodate a _Muggle Studies_ class."

"It is of course your choice, but I thought that as fellow Slytherins, you might grasp the implications of taking such a course and the effects it might have on your future plans." The looks they favored him with as they continued speaking revealed their contempt and skepticism, something he would have to change if he wished to establish himself as their Head of House. "In the current political climate, individuals with your histories will be looked on with suspicion wherever you seek to make your living." He paused for a moment, to let it sink in that he wasn't trying to glorify Muggles in their bigoted eyes.

"Some of us," Parkinson informed him loftily, "don't intend to make a living."

It was an attitude he had expected, and he surmised from the way she clutched Malfoy's arm and the way he rested his hand on hers that they intended to be married and perhaps retreat to the Malfoy estate to shield themselves from their disgrace. "Be that as it may, unless you each find some way to rehabilitate yourself to the Wizarding World, you will have none of the influence you are used to having. If you have any _ambition_ at all, I would advise you listen well."

For the first time, Malfoy had begun to look interested, and Blenheim thought that if he could just win Malfoy, the rest would follow. "None of you can rely on pure blood to assure you political connections anymore. It counts for nothing with most witches and wizards, many of whom are tired of pure blood arrogance. It certainly counts for nothing with Kingsley Shacklebolt, the new Minister of Magic. Since Voldemort and his followers preached an ideology profoundly anti Muggle, it would do each of your images good to be seen taking a Muggle Studies class."

"Ladies, gentlemen, I'll leave you with that thought. You need to show the Wizarding World that you are willing to change."


	11. Theoretical Study

Chapter Eleven: _Theoretical Study_

On Wednesday morning, Harry glowered so forcefully at his schedule that Ron had to take it away from him before it caught fire and he had to ask for a new one. "I thought you liked Defense Against the Dark Arts," Ron asked bemused.

"Just remember it isn't Snape," Ginny chanted again, grinning. The words still almost made her bounce with jubilation. Harry held in a groan, pushing away his plate full of scrambled eggs way and leaving his seat. It was his first class taught by Snape since the revelations of the summer, and he wasn't looking forward to facing the man, and knowing that the same professor who had done his best to make Harry's school years intolerable was his in some way.

He left the table with the pitiful excuse that he had forgotten his textbook and meandered back to Gryffindor tower. There was still time before class, and he didn't feel like spending it with Ron, Hermione and Ginny, all happily unaware that they _would_ soon be facing Snape after all, whether they knew it or not.

Harry knew, and he couldn't say anything.

Outside the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Harry realized he had not been heading back to Gryffindor tower, but that his feet had other plans. When Snape arrived, Harry was already waiting for him.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" Severus snarled, keeping his voice low. Harry noticed vaguely that he wasn't wearing his usual severe black robes, but instead an assortment of clothing that looked as if he might have stolen most of it from Remus and transfigured it into something more appropriately Wizarding. A pang of loss hit him, but he pushed it down.

Harry did his best to force an angry smile. "I have class here in a few minutes." Seeing Snape up close, with every word and movement reminding him brutally that it was Snape he was talking to and not some black eyed grown up version of himself, brought a deep ache up from his bones. This man was somehow a piece of him, a creation of his and Eileen's. It was incomprehensible.

Snape's glare became sidelong and Harry realized belatedly that he had just given the man a challenge to drag less obvious information out of him. "And why are you here now and not a few minutes from now?"

Harry shrugged. Sheer obstinacy had foiled Snape in such skirmishes before. Besides, Harry wasn't sure why he was there either, and he neither wanted to admit that nor have Snape successfully wring the reason from him. He didn't think he'd like it. "I'll be here in a few minutes too."

Snape unlocked the door and threw it open so that it clattered against the wall normally beside it with a bang. Close behind him, leery of the wildly swinging door, Harry shuffled in. The glower Snape sent him from behind his desk made him think better of it, but the door had already slammed shut behind him. As Snape swore, undoubtedly colorfully, under his breath and stamped over to thrust it open again and ram a door stop under it with a forcefully executed hex, Harry dropped into a desk, somewhere in the discreet middle of the room.

The chalk clicked and squeaked against the board Harry lost count of how long he sat there returning the occasional poisoned glances Snape sent his way before other students began to trickle in, preceding a great throng that arrived all at once, jabbering and pointing. Ron dropped down beside him, and Hermione chose to sit beside Ron, leaving an awkwardly empty seat beside Harry, who wished they were flanking him as they had in previous years.

The seat didn't remain empty, because Neville slid into it just before the class began. At exactly nine o'clock, Snape flicked his wand, jerking the door stop out from under the door, which leapt closed. Harry had a sudden urge to put an arm around Neville's shoulder to shield him, except he wasn't the third year who had brought forth a boggart Snape any longer.

Snape was only Snape inside the classroom. Outside he might be a bitter unpleasant individual, but inside the classroom, his teaching robes billowing behind him with every swoop onto an unprepared student, he transformed himself into a figure more ominous than the man who stalked the halls of Hogwarts stealing points from every house except his own. The menace radiated off him as powerfully as ever as he spoke, new face and teaching robes or not.

"You are all here today after having survived the worst assault of Dark Magic the Wizarding World has seen since 1980, and before that, since Grindelwald in 1945." For a moment only, Snape appeared lost, almost guilty, but it passed before anyone except those who knew Harry well enough to recognize them in the instant they flashed over the similar features. "Doubtless you feel proud of yourselves."

Stunned, Harry's mind tried to wrap itself around the notion that Snape might have complemented them, but before he could, Snape's speech resumed, his tone ruthless. "If any of you could subtract, you'd realize that 1980 is only thirty five, and if one is counting from the point at which-" his jaw clenched, "Voldemort began his rise, only twenty five years between Dark Lords."

"You will face another Dark Lord or Dark Lady within your lifetimes, possibly several, and possibly one of them is attending Hogwarts now as Voldemort was when Grindelwald fell." He scanned the room, as if trying to separate out a Dark Lord from amongst his stunned students. The grim lines around his mouth deepened. "Nearly every Wizarding generation has had its own great evil to face. You are none of you alone in your victory; do not be too enamored of it.

"Those of you who did more than merely survive had older and wiser wizards and witches fighting beside you. Next time, you must be prepared to be those older, wiser wizards and witches instead. This is why you are still in this room, not for your N.E.W.T.s or careers that require it, but because you will need to fight the dark again and again."

Harry sat open mouthed as he finished, feeling a bit as if his bubble had burst, but since it was a bubble he knew he had, it had burst gradually and months ago. That likely didn't help his fellow students, who were staring up at their professor in horrified expectation. He sat as still and as silent as any of them, and realized how it must be for the rest of the class. This professor, this unknown quantity, might possibly be more terrifying than any other they had before, perhaps more so than the Carrows, whom they could fight against if they dared.

For the first time, Harry realized what Hermione had meant back in sixth year when she said Snape sounded like _him_.

Severus walked among the students, splitting them into groups of five. "You will be practicing cursing several people at once," he snapped at them all. Without seeming to do it purposely, he split Potter and his two… he hesitated to call them lackeys, junior partners, three ways. The boy glared at him mutinously, but he attempted to do it covertly.

Harry found himself placed in a group with Hannah Abbott, Tracy Davis, Ernie Macmillan, and Padma Patil and gazed wistfully at where Hermione was lecturing Neville and then to where Ron's ears were turning red as he gripped his wand aimed at Theodore Nott and Millicent Bulstrode.

Snape tapped the board sharply. "Instructions are on the board."

* * *

After Snape had released the class, Ron glowered at the scrap of parchment he had copied down their assignment onto. "Two feet on cursing several people at once, three chapters of reading, and next week he expects us to do this again silently?" he gasped, furiously, "When does Prince expect us to do this?"

Even Hermione looked less than thrilled about the assignment, but she kept quiet about it, much to Ron's annoyance. Harry, who had been expecting no different from Snape, was too busy pondering the speech to bother sharing in Ron's grumbling. As Ron continued though, he decided Snape might have once again with very little effort made himself the most hated of all the professors. Either it was a remarkable talent or a remarkable lack of talent. Harry supposed the consistency was comforting.

In some eerie other world, he could see himself in twenty years instead of Snape, giving that speech, and it made him afraid.

For the first time, Harry realized something that in retrospect should have been obvious. When Voldemort had first risen, Snape was still in school, Harry's parents, Sirius and Remus among them. They were the young proud warriors, even as Harry and his friends were. In a few dozen years, he and his friends might have to take their place. He tried to imagine himself as Dumbledore, or McGonagall or Remus or Sirius, or even Tonks, and failed.

* * *

There had only ever been one period, excluding the most recent school year, though even then he was sure many of the students despised him for the Carrows' excesses more than they despised the Carrows themselves, where Severus had a serious rival for the position of most hated professor. It had taken a ministry drone stuffed full of naked bigotry and barely hidden depths of sadism to show him in a positive light by comparison, and the sheer venom she had brought forth in her students, especially Potter and his friends, had almost made him jealous.

Contrary to popular belief, Severus did not relish being hated. He enjoyed being left alone, one of the consequences of being reasonably powerful and hated, and he enjoyed the short term obedience it elicited from most of his students, but he didn't enjoy the hatred itself. So of course, he should have grabbed onto his second chance and used it to make himself a more palatable professor. Yet, he didn't know how to gain even short term compliance from adolescents without also gaining their rancor, and truthfully, it was only in his bleakest moments that he minded much at all.

Still, he was unused to seeing so many horrified faces staring back at him while he was attempting to teach their wearers. According to Minerva, it didn't do to show too much passion for the subject one was trying to teach, because one became so swept up in personal affection for the subject that one forgot to show the usefulness of the subject to the students, who, being of too small mind to actually determine the use themselves, would then lose interest. Those were perhaps not her exact words, but it was how he had interpreted her meaning.

Somehow teachers like Flitwick managed to glow with their personal adoration for their chosen subject, though Severus had never seen what there was to be adored in such an artless pursuit as charms, and still manage to keep student attention. There were also teachers like Lupin, who succeeded in making his lessons outright amusing to students, but Severus would have done anything short of murdering a student to avoid emulating Lupin.

He supposed that he didn't really need to explain the use of defensive magic to his students when the most recent, and one of the most gratuitously violent in recent times, dark lord had been defeated at least in part, by one of their own number. That pressed the point home far better than he ever could, but the continuing use of Defense Against the Dark Arts was another matter.

He supposed from the appalled expressions directed towards him that he had accomplished simultaneously showing passion, making his subject appear relevant, gaining rapt (or terrified) attention, and earning the loathing of his students. It was something of a unique experience. _Yes,_ he thought, _listen, learn, Voldemort isn't the only evil in the world._ He supposed it was a distressing thing to learn, but as it was an obvious one, he had no pity for his students, not that he ever did.

It distressed him somewhat that the only student who appeared to be considering what he was saying was Potter. Even Granger seemed too busy staring at him in stunned fury to absorb anything he said, and she had by Minerva's account digested Umbridge's start of term speech and disseminated it's meaning among her fellow Gryffindors. Then again Potter had prior notice about what he would be dealing with. Every modicum of sense he possessed told him to become worried when Potter was thinking, even if he was disappointed no one else was.

* * *

Hermione did her thinking several floors up and stone walls away from Professor Prince. It was a holdover from a childhood spent idolizing teachers that the distance made her feel safer when considering not quite mutinous thoughts about a professor. She had been alone in her dormitory dismally without a current book to read when she first came to the conclusion Professor Lupin was a werewolf, and when she had decided to present the idea of Dumbledore's Army to Ron and then Harry.

When she had thought that Snape was after the Philosopher's stone in first year, it had been something of a disruption to her vision of the world that a teacher might be _bad_. Then Quirrell turned out to be after the stone, and she had to confront the idea that not only might a teacher be evil, but she could be wrong, no matter how carefully she examined a situation. In second year, her trust and loyalty to the educators of the world had culminated into the inevitable conclusion when it had manifested as a crush on Lockhart. His pure narcissism had snapped her out of her blind love for teachers, but she still contemplated treasonous thoughts about them best when they were absent.

Teachers had always liked Hermione, and as a bright bossy girl as she had been, and still was, she had been more likely to find kindness and friendship among their ranks than among her own peers. When a teacher stepped out of that comforting pattern, she became nervous, and, older, suspicious as well. Professor Prince made her suspicious.

Every year, the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had a secret, so perhaps she had simply become accustomed to that norm. The natural state of the world for her included something fishy at Hogwarts. Once she knew what precisely was fishy, all would be well again. Each of the Defense Against the Dark Arts professors had a secret, therefore this one had a secret as well. There was an obvious logical flaw in that reasoning, and Hermione saw it, but still she had no doubt Professor Prince was hiding something.

Perhaps it was intuition, the sense that Harry was able to trust so implicitly, the instinct that something was _wrong_. Perhaps it was the look on Harry's face as the professor spoke, as if h expected hostility, and could look past it to think. He knew something, that he hadn't bothered to tell her about, and he certainly hadn't told Ron, who wouldn't have been able to keep it from her. All Hermione could conclude was that the defense against the Dark Arts professor again had a secret, and Harry knew it, and that alone was troubling.

* * *

Ginny didn't have Defense Against the Dark Arts until Thursday afternoon. Her opinion of the class became immediately clear from the way she threw herself down onto the bench after attending it and stared at her plate without eating anything. Hermione's book snapped shut and Ron tossed a comforting, brotherly arm around her shoulder. She let it rest there a moment before shrugging it off to try to induce Harry to do the same only in a less brotherly manner.

"Just met Prince?" Ron asked sympathetically.

She slammed her fist down onto the table, startling Harry, who had just realized what she wanted him to do and was steeling himself to comply. "The other professors warned him about me!"

"Warned?" asked Hermione, noticing her food as soon as she stopped reading.

"About me, yes," she grumbled, "it's the only explanation."

"Warned him about what?" Ron sputtered outraged, "what would they have to warn him about?"

Ginny spared him an expression of unsurprised anger, but otherwise ignored him in favor of beginning her tale of the professors', in her opinion, duplicity. "I was just sitting there, when Prince looked at the board and noticed that the chalk was writing rude word, and he just said," she folded her arms and began to mimic him in a way that made Harry glad that Snape was too busy talking to McGonagall to notice, "'Miss Weasley, detention, juvenile attempts at humor such as this display will not be tolerated in my classroom. You. Have. Been. Warned.' And he sort of spit the last few words, too; it spattered all over my desk."

Harry's eyes widened and he worried suddenly that their secret might not be safe for long. Ginny's impressions of Snape were identical to her impressions of "Prince". He shuddered and tried to hide it, but Hermione caught his eye and raised her eyebrows. At least he succeeded in not wincing.

"That wasn't very fair," Ron began, affronted on his sister's behalf and not noticing Hermione's stare, the stare she always gave to tell someone that they were missing the point, "blaming you before he even met you."

Harry finally slipped his arm around Ginny's shoulder as she began her irate agreement, drumming her fingers on the table. "I know! The other professors shouldn't tell each other about students, right? Let them find out for themselves, give us a chance." She grimaced. "I can't believe he calls a detention a _warning_. It isn't a warning, it's a _punishment_! A warning is when they _don't_ punish you."

Harry patted her shoulder gingerly. "Sorry he spoiled your prank and gave you detention."

A slow grin began to spread across her face. "But he didn't spoil my prank." By the time she had finished her denial, her grin stretched as far as her mouth possibly could. "The chalk was a distraction. Every time he tries to give a student a bad mark, his quill's going to sing Celestina Warbeck songs.

Harry tried and failed to picture Snape's expression when his quill started belting out "A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love", and decided he didn't want to anyway.


	12. Trials, Tribulations, and Quidditch

Chapter Twelve: Trials, Tribulations, and Quidditch

The weeks slunk past, and Harry waited longingly for October and the start of Quidditch season. There was something refreshingly pointless about Quidditch; when he was worried about Quidditch, he wasn't worried about something else, something more serious. Often as he sat in class, battling with his transfiguration assignment or suffering through Snape's lectures, he gazed out the window, smiling at the perfect Quidditch weather, and thinking forebodingly that it would probably be gone by the time it was time to fly again.

The first Hogsmeade weekend, a month early so that the students could collect their supplies, was a welcome break from the monotony of class work and Hermione's constant reminders that this was their second chance and that N.E.W.T.s were at the end of the year. She had stamped off furious when Ron told her that they hadn't taken their first chance as they were busy hunting horcruxes, but had come back soon after with study schedules.

As they strode down the path to Hogsmeade arm in arm, Harry reflected that they didn't need to make up because they quarreled that way several times a day when they weren't really fighting. He rested a hand protectively over the pocket of his jeans with the coin bag delivered that morning by way of Bodmin from Gringotts, and ducked into Gladrags Wizardwear, disappearing before Hermione and Ron noticed.

The pudgy shopkeeper padded over to him, and smiled obsequiously with the sort of smile Harry was coming to recognize as the smile of a man who only smiled because he was Harry potter. He wore an aggressively purple robe trimmed in lurid green, and if Harry hadn't shopped there before, he might have been frightened off. "What can I help you with, sir?" he purred.

Harry glanced toward the door. "Just Hogwarts robes, please."

"Ah yes, we'll be seeing a lot of students today," he led Harry back into the fitting rooms and snapped for one of his shop assistants to measure him.

When he left the shop, his arms full of his robes and his ears full of a lecture on magical tailoring that he hadn't understood and didn't much care about, he spotted Malfoy skulking into a second hand store and grinned. The Malfoy estate had been frozen pending their trial, and though Harry didn't doubt that they had something stashed away, it didn't look like Draco Malfoy could get to it.

* * *

Suddenly Hogwarts had become a sea of black again. Even the first and second years, whose parents had sent their robes and supplies by owl, were in their new uniforms. For a few days, it was strange after seeing everybody in their every day clothes to be back in uniform, but then it was comfortingly normal again, and it looked even more like the Hogwarts Harry knew.

Ron and Hermione ambushed him at dinner. "Where on earth did you disappear to?" Hermione asked exasperated, "one minute you were there and the next you were _gone_ we couldn't find you anywhere, we were worried!"

Ron shuffled his feet awkwardly listening to her lecture Harry, who shrugged. "I just went to buy uniforms and school stuff." His new trunk stood at the foot of his bead full of new uniforms, parchment, quills, ink, potions supplies, a cauldron, scales, and mostly new books along with older better loved possessions like the Marauders' Map and invisibility cloak. It felt as if he had moved into Hogwarts again, instead of camping there, and as if Hogwarts was Hogwarts again and that something that had been missing from the school that he hadn't realized was missing was back in place.

"We were worried," Hermione repeated, and Harry thought she really might have been, but not entirely for him. "You should have told us."

Harry shrugged again and Ron leapt to his defense, "you aren't his mum, Hermione." Harry quite agreed, but his mind was on something other than Hermione's snooping, something much more important.

Quidditch practice time bookings started Monday morning, and each year the captains rushed out of their rooms before any sensible person even woke up, before even Oliver Wood had dragged his team bodily out of bed for practice, to wait at Madam Hooch's office door, each eager to be the first to book the pitch. Michael Corner, the new Ravenclaw captain, was widely rumored to be planning to sleep beside her doorway.

His eyes glazed over as he thought about Quidditch until Ron poked him between the shoulder blades, "You bought everything today at least; you can spend tomorrow with us." Harry nodded.

* * *

With Quidditch season in its first bloom, Harry called his team together. He spared a moment to thank the wisdom of Oliver and Angelina in staggering the team's ages and that the team's only new face was Dean, and he had flown with them before. "We aren't playing Slytherin in the first match." He sighed. At least Gryffindor had some warning. "The ministry set a trial date for the Malfoys, and Malfoy has to testify that day." Harry didn't mention that he had been called to testify the ext day himself. "So they've switched with Hufflepuff."

"Wonderful," grumbled Ginny, "Malfoy's managed to dodge playing us first _again_." Harry refrained from reminding her that she hadn't been on the team at the time he had managed it originally, because she was only showing team spirit, which he didn't want to discourage. Besides, it had been his first loss, and he didn't want to think about it. It had been a rotten match all around. Even Cedric Diggery hadn't much enjoyed his victory.

"For once we can't blame the Slytherins for _intentionally_ trying to wrong foot us," Harry reminded them, "and we have plenty of warning." Most of the team, especially Ron looked as if they couldn't believe it wasn't all an elaborate and improvable Slytherin plot to avoid playing them. Harry wished he could agree. He wished they were playing Ravenclaw instead. Michael Corner _had_ slept in front of Madam Hooch's door, until Filch caught him and hauled him away to face detention. He had last pick of times instead of first, and hadn't been able to squeeze much practice time out of the packed schedule.

"I hope Luna's going to be commenting again this year," Dean remarked.

* * *

It was a lovely autumn day, one of the ones that felt like summer still as the Gryffindor Quidditch team trooped down to the pitch in their red and gold robes. A slight breeze played with the edges of their robes, but it wasn't strong enough to interfere with steering, or with any of the balls except the Snitch. In short, they had perfect Quidditch conditions for their first match.

Before the players kicked off into the air, he and Zacharias Smith shook hands with a wary respect that might have bordered on distant fondness, neither could say. It was strange to be fighting someone, even playing Quidditch with someone who had stood beside him to fight for the salvation of Hogwarts and the redemption of the Wizarding World. Harry couldn't quite articulate the feeling, but it felt wrong, nearly sacrilegious.

Harry nodded once to his teammates and took off at madam Hooch's whistle. As the team fell into their positions, Harry circled lazily above the pitch, watching for the Snitch. It struck him that his vantage point was also useful as a captain, because he could see everything that his teammates did with less of a chance that a stray Bludger was going to take his head off.

"Zacharias Smith's trying to score, but I don't think he's going to get it in…" the farmiliar voice floated up to him, somehow giving the impression of sleepy quiet even with magical amplification. Harry watched furious as Hufflepuff's two Beaters both swooped in to whack Bludgers at Ron, just as Smith threw the Quaffle. Ron cartwheeled to avoid them, and the Quaffle flew through the center hoop. "They look like bubble blowers, don't they," was all Luna had to say.

Almost as soon as the Quaffle was in play again, Smith had a hold of it and was speeding towards the Gryffindor hoops. Ginny caught up with him and slipped in beside him, elbowing him in the ribs. As he tried to dodge, she grabbed his arm, trying to wrestle the Quaffle away from him. He ripped his arm away from her before she could secure her hold and pushed her off him. Her broom careened sideways as she fought for balance. "That's Ginny Weasley," Luna murmured into the magical microphone. "I don't think she likes Smith much." Righting herself, Ginny waved her fist and mimed slitting her throat as Smith soared relentlessly back to the hoops. Madam Hooch called a penalty to Hufflepuff, and Harry balled his hands into fists.

Instead of dodging the Bludgers that the Hufflepuff Beater, Branstone, sent hurtling towards him, this time, Ron sped to intercept the Quaffle, even as the Bludgers intercepted him, one right after another. They sent him spiraling through a hoop, Quaffle in hand, and Madam Hooch blew her whistle, signaling another goal for Hufflepuff.

Harry snarled and circled the pitch, searching for the tell tale glint of the Snitch in the sunlight. It was best, he decided, if the game ended quickly. A Bludger whipped just under him as Richard Coote pelted it at one of the Hufflepuff Beaters, but she just sent it back at Ron as he tried to block Cadwallader. "The Gryffindor uniforms are probably infested with grumblethumps," Luna informed them. "They like red." Harry doubted anyone else had ever heard of grumblethumps either.

Harry's eyes darted over the pitch as Demelza Robins rushed her way to the Hufflepuff hoops, Ginny and Dean trying to flank her. Cadwallader, who Luna didn't even try to name, swung in front of her and grabbed the Quaffle away from her while she tried to push him away.

When Ron found himself pummeled with one Bludger and Demelza with the other, and the Quaffle soared through the goal posts again, Harry chose to keep his eyes on the sky for the Snitch, unable to watch. It was only when an exasperated Flitwick announced that the score was eighty zero to Hufflepuff that Harry saw a flash of gold.

He dove after it, but just as he opened his hand to grab it, a Bludger collided with his back and he pitched forward, grabbing his broom handle as he flipped end over end. He panted heavily, and the Snitch had vanished before he could right himself. In hot pursuit of the offending Bludger, Jimmy Peaks hit it at Branstone with a force that suggested he was contemplating murdering the Hufflepuff Beater.

Harry listened as the score rose, ninety zero, one hundred zero, one hundred ten zero, and because Ginny had fouled Zacharias Smith and Hooch granted the Hufflepufs a penalty, one hundred twenty zero. The glare Ginny sent Branstone as she snatched up the Quaffle and pivoted towards the Hufflepuff hoops made Harry wonder if the Beater might need to watch her back off pitch, but she just grinned at the Chaser's ire and pelted a Bludger straight at her as she swooped in to score. The other Hufflepuff Beater sent a Bludger at Jimmy Peaks as he tried to deflect the first. Ginny's leg hung at an odd angle from where the Bludger had pounded into it, and the blow to Peaks had sent him lurching to the other end of the field, gasping.

When Ron finally did intercept the Quaffle, he threw it haphazardly at Dean, who slid off his broom when it hit him square in the chest. Fortunately he caught the broom handle before he fell, but Harry called a time out. As they landed, Ginny guiding Dean's broom down as he just tried to cling to it, Ginny snarled exasperated and struggling to speak coherently with the pain in her leg, "Harry! Ron's being a prat again."

Ron wasn't far behind her. Hunching in on himself from the bruises forming where the Bludgers kept hitting, he gasped, "Harry, Ginny's acting like captain again." His words were almost, but not quite a whine.

"Oh…er…" Harry didn't know what to say to them.

Dean massaged his chest roughly. "Merlin, you're treating him like he's your mother." Any jealousy Harry had been feeling evaporated, and he shot Dean a grateful look.

The look that he gave his team as a whole however, was bleak. "We're almost at the point where we would lose if I caught the Snitch."

"It isn't our fault!" Ginny raged, her face the color of glue. She hadn't dismounted with the others because she couldn't dismount. Her leg wouldn't support her if she tried. "How are we supposed to score if every time we try, a Bludger smashes into us?" She glowered at Peaks, who was swaying as he stood, and at Coote, who backed away. "Where are you two?" she demanded.

Peaks sat down heavily. "We're trying," he retorted weakly.

Harry whirled on him, "Well try harder, because unless you can keep those Bludgers off us, the whole team will be sent to the hospital wing!" He paced back and fourth, his back throbbing with every step. "Ginny, I want you to sit this one out; you can't fly with your leg like that."

Her hands clutched on her broom handle. "Watch me Harry."

"Ginny, your leg's broken."

"I'm not going to let that Branstone girl stop me from playing."

"I hobe she falls ovv her broom," Demelza Robins hissed around a badly bleeding broken nose, and Harry couldn't help agreeing as the whole team nodded.

Harry gave the signal and Madam Hooch's whistle blew to resume play. In the air again, his eyes scraped the air, franticly searching for the Snitch before his team lost anyway. Suddenly, he saw it, flickering beside the Hufflepuff goals, and while the Beaters on both teams watched Cadwallader racing to score, Harry dove after it. At the last minute, the Hufflepuff Beaters saw him, and he felt the Bludgers zoom past him, catching in his robes. Yet, even as the Hufflepuff Beaters lobbed Bludgers at him instead of Ron, Ron couldn't summon the strength to block the Quaffle, battered as he was, and it sailed though the hoop.

But as the Hufflepuff stands filled with cheering, Harry opened his hand. He grinned wildly and closed his hand around the Snitch, the wings beating against his fingers helplessly. The Gryffindor supporters erupted into cheers, but Harry's grin faded as he drifted into a landing. Grim satisfaction took its place briefly, but that faded too as his team mates gathered around him. As they limped, floated, and slunk into the school, none of them felt much triumph.

* * *

It gave Severus a sense of visceral satisfaction whenever he watched Bludgers pummel the members of Gryffindor's Quidditch team. He enjoyed a Quidditch game not involving his own house team for the first time in a while. As a Hogwarts professor, he had to watch every inter-house game, but even as a student, he had little interest in the sport. The only interest it held for him was the license it gave him to gloat when Slytherin won. Of course, that alone was deeply satisfying.

When he had been a student, Madam Richthofen, the Quidditch coach of the time, had called him a natural, but he never tried out for Quidditch. Playing hadn't appealed to him, especially after James Potter and Sirius Black had become Gryffindor Chaser and Beater respectively. He wanted to have nothing in common with _them_.

But he could _fly_, and now he knew why.

* * *

Madam Pomfrey healed their collection of bruises and broken bones, but insisted that everyone except Richard Coote, who was uninjured, and Dean stay the night. In the morning, Demelza's black eyes made her look like a raccoon, Harry's back still felt stiff, and Ginny had to develop a sort of skip to her walk to avoid bending her knee, which made Harry very glad he would never face Hufflepuff's Beaters again.

Before Madam Pomfrey had a chance to fuss over him again, Snape dropped a uniform onto his bed and snapped at him to get up. "The headmistress has requested I escort you to the Ministry to testify, Potter."

Harry glowered at him, "Good morning to you too."

By the time Snape had a chance to reply, Harry had disappeared behind a curtain to change. "Do you want me to give you a detention?"

Harry poked his head around the curtain. "No, I want a comb; do you have one?" Snape snarled at him as he pushed the curtain back and ran his fingers through his hair. For a moment, he thought about tying his hair, long from a year left free to grow, back, but Snape controlled his own unruly mop of Potter hair by tying it back, and Harry didn't want to do anything to emphasize their similarity in appearance. He vowed to have it cut next Hogsmeade weekend as his fingers caught in a tangle.

"Are you ready yet?" Snape hissed, and Harry nodded and followed him out of the school and across the grounds to the Apparition barrier. Snape paused to glance at him as they trudged and conjured a comb. "Do something about your hair," he spat. "You look ridiculous."


	13. Oligarchy

Chapter Thirteen: Oligarchy

They Apparated behind one of the shabby office buildings lining the little back alley with the dismal telephone booth. Harry pulled off his head boy's badge and rubbed at it with the bottom of his uniform. He pinned it back just before Snape grabbed his arm. "Hurry up," he snapped irritably.

Harry yanked his arm back and massaged it. "We're not anywhere near late," he complained, following him into the telephone box.

They squeezed in and Harry retreated against the back wall while Snape dialed six, two, four, four, and two again. "Welcome to the Ministry of Magic please state your name and business," the emotionless woman's voice filled the box.

Snape, who felt none of the indecision Mr. Weasley had felt when he had taken Harry for his hearing before fifth year, snarled into the telephone mouthpiece, "Sebastian Prince, escorting Harry Potter to testify at the trial of Mr. and Mrs. Lucius Malfoy."

"But what about Malfoy?" Snape raised an eyebrow. "I mean Draco Malfoy; isn't he going to be tried?"

"The minister," Severus inclined his head in the direction of Kingsley Shacklebolt's new office, "owing to the circumstances, decided not to press charges."

"Oh."

"Thank you visitor, please take the badge and attach it to the front of your robes," the queerly inhuman voice said, and two badges rattled their way into the change chute. "Visitor to the Ministry, you are required to submit to a search and present your wand for registration at the security desk, which is located at the far end of the Atrium."

As the ground sank away, quaking as it did, the metal groaning in protest, Harry ran his fingers over the glass windows and traced a nail over the stone. "Brainless boy! Get away from there," snarled Snape, snatching Harry's hand back. When Harry didn't pull back and Snape had nowhere to pull him, he released it awkwardly. Harry stared at the bleeding nail for a moment before sucking on it, trying to stop the blood.

The telephone box shuddered to a stop. "The Ministry of Magic wishes you a pleasant day," the voice echoed just before the door leapt open. Snape swept out and Harry followed, trying not to look like a scolded child. They made their way smoothly between the floos and the people Apparating and Disapparating. Harry saw as they passed that both the destroyed fountain and the witch and wizard enthroned on the backs of Muggles had been replaced with an ornate circular fountain with a spire that sent water cascading to the bowl of the fountain in a clear, solid dome.

They strode over to the security desk, and Harry handed the wizard behind the desk his wand and waited for him to finish waving his long golden rod up and down Harry's front and back, reminding himself again and again that this time at least the trial wasn't his own. Snape submitted to the same treatment with far less grace, muttering and growling when asked to hand over his wand. Only when his wand was in his hand again with a bored "Ten and three quarters inches, ebony and phoenix feather?" did Snape relax. Harry thanked the wizard, and Snape supplied his own terse thanks before swooping through the gates to the lifts.

The lift clattered and clanged to a stop and the grille slid open, the people inside streaming out. In their place, Snape, Harry, several ministry employees, a dozen flying interdepartmental memos, and a tea kettle that periodically exploded and reformed itself filled the lift when it began moving again. Harry pushed his hair in front of his face as the Ministry employees looked at him, turned to each other and pointed, whispering. He flushed a dull red as he heard Snape snarl "It's rude to point." The witches and wizards around him glared affronted at Snape, and moved as far from him as they could in the confines of the lift. The cool female voice ticked off the floors as they descended, the lift emptying a bit at each floor, until "Department of Mysteries." Harry flinched and Snape smiled nastily.

The grille slid open, and Snape led the way out of the lift and down the side stairs to level Ten. Harry grimaced at the courtroom door as he moved to open it, and Snape's nasty smile returned. "The Wizengamot decided to reopen the courtroom for the trials of suspected death eaters."

Harry glared at him poisonously, "You ought to be very familiar with the place then." Snape kept smiling and conjured a rickety school chair and sent it gliding to land against the wall as Harry opened the door and shuffled in.

Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy sat in the two heavy chained armed chairs, or Lucius sat, rigidly, and Narcissa slumped. Behind their chairs stood a pair of Aurors, looming menacingly in the gloomy dungeon courtroom. Harry's eyes passed across the walls and the benches filled with the fifty members of the Wizengamot. The torches flickered dully over the rough dark stone walls and floor, throwing light and shadow in strange and somewhat sinister seeming ways. A large wooden chair with an arched back and turned legs stood in the shadows. He gazed up at Kingsley Shacklebolt, who shook his head to tell him to stay where he was.

Narcissa's eyes darted to him and back to the Wizengamot and continued speaking. "I bent over him and saw that he was breathing," she whispered, "but I told the Dark Lord that he was dead. The Dark Lord said that no one could stand against him, and cast the Cruciatus curse on him and then had Dumbledore's half giant Hagrid carry him to the castle. We marched on the castle and the Dark Lord demanded the resisters' surrender, and showed off the Potter boy." Her sullen face turned to him for a moment as she paused for breath. "They refused to believe that he was dead, and refused to surrender. The Dark Lord summoned the Sorting Hat and put it on one of the students' head, and set it on fire." She paused as if for dramatic affect, and Harry supposed she was playing for her life, really.

"A giant burst in, distracting everyone while the boy escaped from the sorting hat and pulled out of it a sword, which he used to kill the Dark Lord's snake. At the same time, Potter disappeared-"

"Disappeared?" asked a wizened old woman.

"Vanished." She clarified, "and my husband and I followed suit." Her jaw jumped as she strained briefly at her restraints, as if she were trying to fold her arms across her chest."

"You may stand down, Mrs. Malfoy," Kingsley told her, though because the was chained in place, it was only a formality.

"Harry Potter," called Kingsley, and Harry looked up ant him. He nodded at the chair without chains, and Harry strode over to it with as much confidence as he could muster, sitting down stiffly, his back still sore from the Bludger. When he tried to lean back, the spindly wooden bars to hat the back of the chair dug into his back. "State your full name," Kingsley boomed.

"Harry James Potter," Harry's mouth had gone dry, and his tongue didn't want to work.

"You are here on behalf of Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy to corroborate testimony given by the former."

Harry nodded.

"Could you please say that aloud, for the record?"

"Yes," he choked out.

"Did He Who Must not Be Named cast the killing curse on you as Mrs. Malfoy claims?"

"Yeah," Harry said quietly. "Voldemort cast the killing curse on me." Most of those present flinched, but Lucius stayed carefully and obviously still.

"But you survived?"

"Yeah, twice." A few people smiled appreciatively.

"And did Mrs. Malfoy, as she claimed, bend over you to see if you were alive?"

"Yeah," His hands shifted in his lap and he stared determinedly at the wall to the side of the Wizengamot.

The same ancient witch who had asked Narcissa about Harry's disappearance asked both suspicious and puzzled, "Why did He Who Must Not Be Named ask the accused to examine you?"

"Well he was afraid, wasn't he?" Harry murmured, "I have a habit of surviving." A few of the Wizengamot members chuckled, but Harry didn't see what was amusing. He did have a habit of surviving. It was after all, what he was famous for. He was still the Boy Who Lived.

Kingsley picked up the questioning again. "Did she than tell He Who Must Not Be Named that you were dead?"

"Yeah, but-"

"And did she take part in the battle after that point?"

"No, but-"

"Thank you Mr. Potter."

A slow frustration that built with each question and each answer he had to give in support of the _Malfoys_ reached its peak. "She didn't do it to help me!" he burst out. "She did it because she wanted to find her son! She didn't care about fighting Voldemort or any of it; she just wanted to get inside Hogwarts!"

Kingsley gave him a wry, sympathetic smile, but he said, "You're free to go, Mr. Potter."

Harry rose jerkily and fled.

* * *

Harry found Snape, tracing the fissures and veins in the rock walls with his fingers. "I hope you weren't bored," he muttered to him.

"Don't be ridiculous, Potter, your testimony was not of great import," sneered Snape. "It did not keep you long enough for me to succumb to boredom."

"I wonder if my testimony was important to Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy," Harry snapped. "Should I go back in and ask them?"

"No, Potter, you're not _allowed_ back in."

"Really," said Harry, disbelieving, but he remembered when Mr. Weasley had told him he wasn't allowed to come with Harry into his hearing.

"The Wizarding World does not believe in public trials, the better to disguise any corruption," Snape's eyes flashed, "and sometimes no trials at all."

Harry flushed, and wondered if Snape were trying to remind him of Sirius, or if it was accidental. "That can't be the normal way they do things,"

"This is the world you fought to preserve, Potter! Surely you knew what you were fighting for." He quivered as he spoke, and Harry stepped away from him.

It struck Harry as very strange that Snape, who had himself been a Death Eater, should speak so passionately about governmental tyranny. "You can talk," he shot back resentfully, "being a Death Eater and all."

"Do be quiet Mr. Potter, at least where people can hear you," Snape replied scornfully, and Harry realized then that he and Snape had not moved from the hallway. He hesitated for only a moment before he pivoted on his heel and marched to the stairway. "Are you running away?" he snarled at Harry.

"No," he answered coldly without turning his head, "I expect you to follow."

Snape did follow. He had to. They walked in silence up the stairs and ignored each other as they waited for the lift. "I don't understand why we can't Apparate from here," Harry asked once they had pressed into the lift.

Snape gazed at the ceiling "There are anti-Apparition wards over the whole complex."

"Then why couldn't we have Apparated into the Atrium the way everyone else here does?"

"Only Ministry employees are allowed to apparate into the Atrium. All visitors must arrive though the _visitor's_ entrance." He spoke slowly, as one would to children or the mentally subnormal.

"Oh."

"We can however, Apparate out from there."

The cool, emotionless voice rang through the lift, "The Atrium." The grille slid open, and Harry, Snape, and the crush of people in the lift with them pushed their way out and through the golden gates.

Snape grabbed Harry's arm roughly and prepared to Disapparate, but Harry pulled his arm back. "I can Apparate," he raged, "myself." Snape dropped his arm and Disapparated away. Harry smirked at the air where he had just been and, amidst the crowd of people arriving and departing, Disapparated as well.

The grass beneath their feet crunched as they walked. There had been a hard frost the night before, and the water hadn't yet thawed on the blades. Harry glowered at the sun, still low in the east, wondering how early it still was. "You were saying earlier," he prompted nervously, "about the Ministry?"

"You should know it already," Severus snapped in return, gazing out at the Forbidden Forest, a border of fiery crowns on the late autumn morning.

Harry scowled down at him irate, glad for their respective heights. "Who exactly was supposed to tell me?" he asked rhetorically.

"You shouldn't have to be told! You saw most of it." Snape's hand clenched, "I'm sure Black" his lip curled at the name, "told you he was sent to Azkaban without trial. You suffered though a full trial by the Wizengamot at Fudge's whim, and he only just allowed you that. It only takes the swipe of a pen to declare one guilty without trial. It is innocence that has to be proven, not guilt, and the only way that's even possible is if a member of the Wizengamot deigns to ask the right questions for the accused to answer!" The sun gleamed amidst puffy clouds, but the temperature belied the day's pleasant appearance, so they met no one as they tramped across the grounds, and as they walked, Snape's fervor increased. "And who judges these trials but the Wizengamot, who are also responsible for charging the accused in the first place!"

Snape breathed deeply, shaking as he pulled in great gulps of air. Harry walked mechanically, watching him, but as Snape collected himself, Harry opened his mouth. "Why does this matter to you?" he asked, somehow bitter.

Harry found himself too engrossed in Snape's speech that he barely noticed when they passed into the castle, but Snape, despite his passion, noticed. When he answered, his voice had dropped. "Did any of your friends talk to you about voting for Minister of Magic?"

Harry looked around, and replied, voice low, "No."

"That's because none of them did. None of their parents did. No one votes for any Ministers at all. The Wizengamot appoints them. The Wizengamot as a whole appoints new Wizengamot members. The Minister is usually a member of the Wizengamot himself." Snape snorted and half closed his eyes. "Every official in the Ministry is appointed by another official, or by the Wizengamot."

"Then why did they get rid of Fudge?" Harry asked, "if no one voted him out." The halls were almost empty as they passed though them. Harry's trainers squeaked on the stone floors on the way to Snape's office.

"The Wizengamot occasionally bows to pressure from the masses, or," he growled pointedly, "the wishes of a Wizarding hero."

Harry shifted uncomfortably as he walked, trying to ignore Snape's backhanded reference to his fame. "But why do they even care what people think if they can't do anything about it?"

"Think Potter!" he hissed darkly, "They don't want a rebellion!"

"There haven't been any rebellions, have there?" He kicked a loose stone between his feet.

Shape twisted around to face him. "Of course there have been!" Harry started. The only rebellions he had learned about in History of Magic were goblin rebellions. "There haven't been any successful rebellions since the one that put the Wizengamot in power; its members are remarkably successful in co-opting the most influential and magically powerful members of the Wizarding World, usually by making them members, but there have been not infrequent rebellions." He snorted in disgust. "You will, more than likely be invited to become one of their number soon after you leave school."

"But how can fifty people control everyone? They don't have an army."

Snape opened his office door and pushed Harry though. When he had closed it again and the tumbler clicked shut, he rounded on Harry and spoke again, "The Wizarding population is _small_, Potter. Fifty extraordinarily magically gifted individuals and their supporters can fend off several thousand more ordinary witches and wizards, so long as the majority is unable to fight or don't care enough to do so."

"Why wouldn't they care?" Harry shot back, sharply aware at that moment that he was fresh from fighting a murderous tyrannical government, even if it had been a young one, and even if in the defeat of that government the Wizengamot had reinstated itself.

"Are you that naive, Potter?" Snape sneered. "Most people don't care who rules them so long as they're not suffering for it. Only in rare circumstances does a great tide of emotion sweep though the Wizarding World, and then, as I said earlier, the Wizengamot usually bends to the pressure.

Harry slumped back against the wall. "But hasn't anyone ever fought the Wizengamot just because it isn't right they're that powerful?"

"Yes Potter," Snape told him, glowering at the wall behind his head. "Half the Dark Lords began as rebel leaders, and most of the rest claimed they were."

"Is that why you joined Voldemort?" Harry asked shrewdly, "you thought you were fighting a revolution?"

Snape stared at him startled, and then scowled. "Yes," he admitted grudgingly. "I thought I was fighting a revolution." He pulled his hand away from the desk that he had been resting it on as if it had burned him. "I'm a halfblood. The notion of pureblood superiority didn't hold great enough appeal to me."

"Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'."

"What about the Malfoys?" Harry demanded, appropriate, he thought, because he had just been to the Ministry to testify on their behalf. "They had plenty of influence in the Wizarding World, shouldn't they be fighting against a revolution?"

"The Malfoys thought that as if they helped bring about the new world, they would be favored within it." As Snape started speaking, Harry once again got the impression that he was doing so as if he were speaking to a somewhat slow toddler instead of to a reasonably intelligent eighteen year old. "Besides, they presumed that the government the Dark Lord would create would be even more plutocratic than the current one."

Harry resolved to look up the word "plutocratic" as soon as he next visited the library, because he didn't know how much explaining he would have to do if he asked Hermione for a definition. "So, no high ideals for them, then."

"Only if you consider smugness to be a high ideal."

"I thought only a real idiot would miss that Voldemort was barking." There was also willful blindness, but Harry discounted that.

Severus glared at him venomously. "Don't worry; you aren't the first father to be less than pleased with the youthful politics of your offspring." Potter stared at him nonplussed, and he realized with a sick feeling that he had just referred for the first time out loud to their shared genetic relationship.

"I'm very glad you didn't take my name," Harry retorted, pulling himself up and clenching his teeth. Snape bared his teeth in a feral smile and unlocked his office door. As Harry strode stiffly out, Snape inclined his head mockingly.

Outside the door, Hermione saw the bow and Harry's face as he walked out and filed both away to consider later.


	14. Accidents

Chapter Fourteen: Accidents

It was on the Monday before the winter holidays that Michael Corner almost set the potions dungeon on fire. Harry and Ron had always agreed that it was perfectly rotten of the professors to schedule a pile of tests for the last week before the holidays, so they felt somewhat less than sympathetic when the hem of Professor Belby's robe actually did catch fire. Michael Corner's cauldron shot downward of its tripod after he added his fifth ingredient third and left a crack in the stone floor. The potion, which had apparently been acidic, ate through the grout between the stones, the bottom of a filing cabinet, and two of the legs of the table with the rest of his potions supplies. The table crashed down, and the supplies piled atop it slid down into the potion running over the floor. With a great bang, flames blazed up from the liquid. Belby's robe, which the potion had been slowly dissolving, caught fire, and Michael Corner, trying to be helpful, attempted to stamp it out. Instead, Belby tripped and fell against Harry's table. Harry caught his potion before it fell and put it back over the fire, but he mostly ignored it as he watched the chaos.

The fire itself seemed to be acidic, because everything it touched dissolved as much as it burned, and it ate through anything but the stone floor. The sides of the newly ruined filing cabinet gained big gaping holes where the flames had licked the metal. Harry could see loose papers and a collection of leather bound journals peaking out before he turned his eyes back to Michael Corner and Belby.

As he tried to put out the fire on Belby's robes, Michael Corner hadn't noticed his bootlace had caught as well. When he did, he hopped over to a chair, trying to pull his boot off. The hem of his robe suddenly freed, Belby sprinted to the supply cabinet, pulled out four small bottles, and tossed them each into the potion, counting silent intervals between each. The fire died instantly and the potion ran harmlessly down one of the many drains dotting the floor of the dungeon. Michael corner pulled his bootlace free from his boot and blew out the flame clinging to it like a candle flame to a wick.

"Class dismissed," Belby exclaimed, shaken, "you will retake the test after the holidays." He gazed around the room. "Except you, Mr. Corner," he told him as he tried to slink off. Harry, Ron, and Hermione tipped their own potions down the drain and packed up, hiding grins all the while.

* * *

By dinner, the story had spread throughout the school. Severus gloated as Belby sat resolutely still to avoid squirming with discomfort. Try as he might, however, Severus couldn't discount the man's ability as a brewer. It he weren't so skilled in the technical aspects of the craft, he wouldn't be so convincing a fraud. He couldn't invent so much as a cure for warts, but he could understand any potion he found. Still, the disaster had provided an amusing start to the week and Snape smirked on.

* * *

Harry walked with Ron and Hermione to the train, but didn't board with them. Ron thought he needed to spend time with his brothers so soon after Fred had been murdered, and Hermione grumbled that her parents still hadn't forgiven her for sending them to Australia, and she had to make it up to them. Ginny however, had elected to stay behind with Harry, because, as she claimed, she couldn't spend another moment with her family, not right then, not when they were all mourning Fred and fighting with each other over the smallest things. At least for a while, she wanted to forget.

Ginny had also decided to wait in the tower while Ron and Hermione left for their respective homes, so that Ron wouldn't wheedle her into joining him. Harry's mind had floated up to her as he waved good bye to the train as it sped out of the Hogsmeade station, and he hiked back up to the school as soon as the train was out of sight. He pulled his scarf tighter and looped it around his neck again, burying his hands in his sleeves as he walked. A thin blanket of snow covered the fields and a vicious wind blew though him. He walked slowly, his feet crunching in the snow, a black dot distinctly visible against the white snow from above. As he tramped miserably, Ginny made her way down from the tower, a heavy coat hastily pulled over her shoulders. She burst through the doors and ran out to him, clasping his hand from where it rested inside his coat sleeve and pulled him inside with her. "Ginny, what…"

"Come on," she whispered, "Neville went to stay with Hannah Abbot. We have Gryffindor tower to ourselves."

"Oh." She winked at him conspiratorially, and he wondered with a pang of jealousy if she had ever winked that way at her boyfriends before him. It struck him with more than a pang that she might have followed up on that wink before she dated him. His mind flashed to Eileen, but then Ginny smiled at him, and he shoved the memory away.

When they passed over the threshold into the school, Harry sank into the warm air like bath water, shivering as his body warmed up. Ginny laughed at him and tilted her head. "I lied, you know, we don't have the common room entirely to ourselves. There're a couple of second years left, but they shouldn't be too hard to scare off."

"You're not very nice are you," he teased. He liked that about her. She wasn't afraid to be a little mean, but she was never cruel.

"No," she replied unrepentantly, "not very." Her fingers ran though his tousled hair and trailed over the shell of his ear. He backed away flushed and uncertain, and she chucked low in her throat. Her hand returned to his, and she gave it a soft squeeze. "But I can be."

He blushed even harder and she grinned wickedly at his discomfort. "No you can't." She grinned even wider.

As soon as they stepped onto the staircase, it swung away from its previous landing, and Harry wondered if it were true that the staircases moved as they did because they didn't like being taken for granted. They certainly seemed to shift most when he was distracted. Ginny kicked the base of the railing and the staircase swung faster. "I know a way back to the tower from here," Harry commented when they had leapt to the safety of the landing.

She rested her head onto his shoulder as they walked. He smiled and ambled his way with her up to the tower. The Fat Lady sniffed at them as they came into view. "Password?"

"Norwegian Ridgeback," Ginny told her, tapping her foot as the portrait delayed opening until she gave them one last disapproving glance. Harry and Ginny turned to each other and chortled before taking their seats in a pair of squashy armchairs next to the crackling fire.

"It's a little difficult to get… er… close," Ginny told him when he had flopped down into the chair next to hers, "when you're in one chair and I'm in another."

Harry leaned over the armrest and kissed her on the cheek. "Close enough?"

"Not quite," she breathed, turning in towards him and deepening the kiss. She wrapped an arm around him and tangled her fingers in his hair as he tried not to topple back over into his seat with her on top of him. A smile spread across her face as she pulled away.

Harry pulled her back, and she let him. Her hands played with his hair as she kissed his neck and he tried to figure out where he should put his hands. He settled for her hips, but he ran them across the fabric covering her back and arms too. She slowly tried to peel his coat off him, untwining his scarf and tossing it aside.

A faint tapping which neither of them had noticed grew louder, and Harry glanced over at the window. Bodmin pecked at the windowpane, flapping lopsidedly with a rodent clutched in one talon. "Excuse me," he mumbled, and slipped out of her embrace. Groaning with irritation, she released him and slid back into her own seat. He lifted the latch and tugged the window open just wide enough for her to come in out of the icy wind. The Owl fluttered into the common room, landing clumsily on the carpet. She hooted at him gratefully, and began to disembowel her rabbit.

"I don't see a letter," Ginny said doubtfully.

"There isn't one," Harry explained, sitting back down. His stomach turned and flipped as Bodmin ripped strips of flesh off her meal and choked them down.

"I thought owls swallowed their food whole," Ginny said, her mouth twisting.

"I suspect it's too big," he replied, watching the bird eat.

They leaned back into the overstuffed cushions of their chairs, and when Bodmin finished eating, Ginny sighed with relief. Hey sat in companionable silence, watching her flutter around the room. Whenever she noticed them watching, she hooted at them reprovingly with a quick succession of seven hoots without stopping her flight. Circling the room, she rose higher and higher, searching for a roost, but she couldn't find one, so she swooped down and perched on the back of Harry's chair. He stroked her back uncertainly, and she nipped at his fingers halfheartedly when they came near.

The hours slipped past as the sky darkened, and Bodmin left the back of Harry's chair. He stood up to open the window for her to leave, but she just drifted back to the bloody spot on the carpet where she had eaten her rabbit. "What…" Ginny asked, then Bodmin started gagging and coughing the bones and fur of her meal back up. "Does she have to do that in here?" she complained as the compressed remains of the rabbit landed on the floor in the middle of the blood. With a final hoot, she lifted off and glided to the window. Harry opened it for her, and she flew off.

He walked away from the window, and a great roar of cold air whipped into the room. Ginny wrapped her arms around herself. "Close it Harry," she begged, but he didn't. Instead, he gingerly picked up the pellet and tossed it out the window behind Bodmin as she flew off into the twilight. Neither of them felt much like kissing after that.

* * *

On Christmas morning, the sky was white, threatening to snow. Harry awoke alone in the chilly morning air to a respectable pile of presents. He had sent his off the night before with Bodmin, who was, he assumed, sleeping in the owlery by then. He only had two presents left to give. He set them both, wrapped and ready to go, on his bedside table and loaded his arms down with presents to take down to the common room. He balanced his two gifts for others on top and made his careful way down the stairs.

By the time he succeeded in traversing the staircase, Ginny was already seated by the fire, waiting for him. "I was just about to go up to fetch you," she told him, helping him arrange the pile on one of the tables. She handed him a wrapped package with a sort of nervous pride, and he took it from her carefully. "Well open it," she demanded impatiently after he had stared at it for a minute.

He peeled the tape away delicately and unfolded the glittering paper. Inside was a strange leather contraption with straps and a long narrow pouch. "It's a wand sheath, for inside the wrist," she told him happily, but her tone took on a note of bleakness as she informed him, "Tonks had one, and I always thought it was really cool."

"Yeah," he said, "Yeah it is." He stared at it a moment longer. "Can you help me put it on?" She slipped it on over his hand and tightened the straps, tongue between her teeth. "Thanks Ginny," he said, embarrassed. He reached down and picked up her present to hand it to her. "Here," he thrust it at her. She snickered at his abruptness and goofy smile, taking the present and tearing off the paper. "I didn't know what to get you," he confessed. Actually he didn't know what to get a girl, any girl, but he knew she liked Quidditch, so he bought her a new pair of Quidditch gloves, nice ones, made out of dragon hide, to replace the hand-me-downs from Charlie she had been using.

"Oh thank you!" she cried, kissing him, "they're wonderful." Harry blushed a bit and she chuckled at his expense. They ripped their way through their respective piles of presents, and Ginny came away with a box of pranks from George, which made her blink back tears, assorted sweets from the rest of her brothers, a hand knitted sweater from her mother, and a box of light bulbs from her father, which he had apparently found absolutely fascinating. Harry received his own Weasley sweater with a lightening bolt on it, which he promptly packed away, somewhat embarrassed, a prank box from George, a box of sugar quills from Ron, "so we can fool Hermione into thinking we're studying, mate!" and a book of Quidditch strategies from world cup matches from Hermione, who resigned herself to her friends' less than scholarly interests, but felt compelled to give them some form of book anyway. Ginny asked to borrow it just before they left for breakfast.

* * *

Severus gritted his teeth as he yanked open his office door to see Potter waiting behind it. In his hands was, revoltingly, a brightly wrapped package. "What do you want?" he demanded, clenching his teach even harder.

"Merry Christmas to you to," Potter grumbled, shoving the gift at his chest.

Severus fumbled with the package for a moment and snarled, "Why are you still here?"

The boy leapt backward, glowering at him, and marched stiffly out. Severus shut the door behind him with a tense smile.

* * *

"I got Dad a couple of Matchbox cars for Christmas, and he's been bugging Hermione to tell him how they work, and exactly what they have to do with matchboxes."

Harry snorted. "So Hermione came to the Burrow to visit?"

"Came down yesterday; she and Ron are going up to the train together." Ginny giggled, but it was a wicked sort of giggle. "Actually Dad's letter said that he asked Hermione, but she told him to ask you, because they were really a boy's thing. I think she told him that to shut him up."

"Probably," Harry acknowledged, "poor Hermione."

"So what exactly do Matchbox cars have to do with matchboxes?"

"They're small?"

"That's _all_?"

"I think so, yeah."

"Dad's going to be disappointed." She laid her head across his lap and smiled up at him. "He thought them might be used to light matches or something similar."

"I'm sure he's having tremendous fun trying," he said, remembering Mr. Weasley trying to get the fire started at the Quidditch World Cup.

"Yeah."

"Maybe next time you can get him a car shaped lighter." He stroked her hair and tried to calculate how awkward it would be to try to kiss her when her head was on his lap.

"He'd burn the house down," Ginny laughed. "Mum would murder me." Harry chuckled with her.

"Have you figured out what to do with the light bulbs yet?"

She snorted. 'I've been thinking about enchanting them to tell jokes. This one girl in my year tells these jokes about how many people it takes to screw in a light bulb, and I want to see if I can get them to follow filch around spouting those jokes every time he opens his mouth."

"How many Ravenclaws does it take to change a light bulb?"

"How many?"

"Depends on what you want it changed into..."

"That's really awful," but she laughed anyway. "Mind if I use it?"

"Go right ahead."

"Anyway, I have much bigger plans for the fireworks and the trick quills. The latter will make a lovely addition to the staff room, don't you think?" The smile she flashed him was quite terrifying.

"I have some exploding ink pots to go with them."

"That's the spirit!" An arm snaked around his neck as she pulled herself upright. He braced her with his arm around her back, and she kissed him cheerfully. "Do you want to hear my plans for the fireworks?"

"I don't think I want to know!"

She put a finger to her lips. "You'll see," she murmured, "You'll see."

"Now I really don't want to know."

She grimaced and kissed him again. "Yes," she replied pensively, "you'll need plausible deniability when the Professors ask you about it."

Ginny twisted around until she was sitting next to Harry in the oversized chair instead of on him. Her hair fanned out behind her in a fiery arch against the chair's cushioned back as she placed a hand on Harry's knee, which was brushing hers.

He sidled away from her, until he couldn't move any further, pressed against the armrest. "I didn't mean," he mumbled nervously. "I didn't mean to crowd you."

Surprised, she glanced over at him. "You really have no idea sometimes, don't you? You weren't crowding me."

"I wasn't?"

"Get back over here," she crooked a finger at him.

He shifted back to where he had been. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she whispered into his ear. "It's actually sort of charming, knowing I'm the first to do this," she squeezed his knee "and this," she kissed his neck, "and this," she breathed, nibbling his ear. Harry's blood ran cold.

* * *

Harry found himself taken aback at the sight of the door to Snape's office ajar, Snape standing within waiting for him. "How did you know I was coming?"

"Thank you for the Foe-Glass," he smiled nastily. Harry wrinkled his nose and pondered the merits of exchanging the birthday present hidden in his trunk for a repackaged box of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes sweets or something equally unkind. "Well? What are you waiting for? State whatever idiotic business you have with me or leave."

There was nothing about Ginny Weasley that should have brought Eileen Prince to mind. Ginny was fiery where Eilleen was dark, Ginny was boisterous where Eileen was sullen, Ginny was energetic where Eileen was calm, and Ginny was confidant where Eileen was coy and uncertain. Yet Ginny had brought her so forcefully to mind that he found himself out of the common room and down the corridor with Snape's office before he realized where he was going. "How," to his mortification, his voice cracked, but he plowed on. "How did Eileen die?"

Ten or twelve different emotions passed over Severus' face before he managed to school it into fury. "Get. Out." Harry fled.

* * *

That evening, Severus paused by the table in the library where Potter was putting the final touches on a Herbology paper. "She died falling off the roof. She broke her neck."

Harry stared down at his paper, his stomach twisting. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

"Are you happy, Mr. Potter? She survived years with her husband, the Dark Lord's rise to power, my arrest, and everything else to slip and fall trying to patch the roof." He felt disgusted, but not with his mother, "An accident."


	15. A Chance Discovery

Chapter Fifteen: A Chance Discovery

Severus left the library in a dreadful bad temper. How dare Potter ask him that, the gall of the boy to ask him how his mother died? His foot falls rang though the hall as he paced from one end to the other and back again.

The incongruity of the fact that Harry Potter was his father struck him again. This was Potter, whom he had taught for six and a half years. The boy was younger than he was, young enough to be _his_ son, and wasn't that a revolting thought.

That was the problem really; he was a boy, an arrogant, swaggering, reckless, wretch of a boy with no regard for anyone around him. He was a child. Perhaps he understood on an abstract level that other people were worth his care, but he didn't think about them often. He respected no one and nothing. In the part of his mind in which he kept secrets from himself, Severus acknowledged that he was much the same in that one way at least. He respected no one living.

He respected many things however, even if none of them were breathing, at least not anymore. He respected power. He didn't like it, and he disliked it most when others had it and he did not. He respected magic, which was a part of power, and he respected knowledge, which was a greater part still. Most of all he respected a dead man, though he did not respect any living ones.

He respected privacy, which clearly Potter did not. He respected respect itself, which Potter was entirely ignorant of. It hurt, he admitted grudgingly, remembering how his mother died, and he cursed Potter for reminding him of it. It wasn't the boy's right.

He felt the stone floor pound his feet though his boots. When at last he came to the conclusion that he had no excuse to be wandering the halls, not even an excuse to give himself, no students to watch for because they were on holiday, no suspicions of wrongdoing amongst the staff, did he return to his office. Once there, he pulled open a desk drawer and cursed.

* * *

When Severus had requested that Slughorn brew potions for him, the man had done so with irritating good grace. Belby, who had less reason to be annoyed, as he didn't know that Sebastian Prince was really Severus Snape, sulked beautifully when Severus asked him to brew. He didn't often, it would look suspicious, but he had an infestation of doxies in a few of his desk drawers and didn't have any doxycide. It had absolutely nothing to do with the black mood he had been in since Potter had asked him how his mother had died, nothing to do with actually wanting to see Belby grumble and fuss. That was simply a side benefit, he assured himself.

Whatever his stated reason for standing in the middle of the potions classroom, he clenched his fists in fury at Belby's absence. The man wasn't in his office either, and Severus had no intention of searching the school for him. A small voice told him that Belby was most likely in the staffroom or speaking with Minerva, but he ignored it in preference to comfortable irritability.

Something in the corner of the room caught his eye and a quiet suspicion began to form as he waited. Peaking out of the gaping holes in the sides of the filing cabinet standing unobtrusively against the wall, he could see something familiar. He stepped over to it, and hexed the drawer open expectantly. In the scuffed metal frame, the drawer's label read 1975-1985.

In a rare moment of frivolity, he had spent a fair piece of his first real paycheck to purchase a leather bound notebook with an infinite page spell which he had used as his potions journal. Some time into his second job in a pharmaceutical potions laboratory, he had lost it. To add insult to injury, he couldn't remember what he had written in it well enough to reconstruct any of it. He had lost two years worth of work along with the notebook, and had cursed himself roundly and repeatedly at the time. It had amazed him for years that he couldn't remember anything within its pages either.

Yet it sat innocently amidst the notebooks and loose diagrams in the filing cabinet drawer. His ill temper disappeared. Vengeful satisfaction was an emotion marginally preferable to bleak rage, in fact, it almost approached happiness. His lips twitched into a cruel smirk. Carefully, he lifted his old notebook out of its nest of papers and rubbed his finger across the cover. Then he stopped. Should he take the notebook, and risk Belby accusing him of theft, or trying to Obliviate him again? He had no doubt his colleague would discover that the notebook's disappearance when he repaired the filing cabinet. He could take the entire contents of the cabinet, as further proof of the man's intellectual theft and to obscure his own identity (after all, if he stole only his own notebook, it would be simple to deduce that he was Severus Snape and not Sebastian Prince.

He smiled triumphantly and hefted the notes out of the drawers and stacked them on the table. He could come back for the Doxycide later. He would purloin these first.

Secure in the knowledge, once he stopped to consider it, that Belby wouldn't dare involve the other teachers in trying to recover the notes lest he run the risk of one of them examining the notebooks and discovering that they belonged to someone else, Severus floated the ponderous stack out of the dungeons and into his office. On the way, he wondered what ideas Belby had stolen from him. It explained quite handily why he couldn't remember any of his notes, which was a relief, he was quite proud of his ability to research, but he still felt compelled to review his notes. A sudden curiosity welled up inside of him.

He levitated the bundle of notebooks and papers into his office and they came to rest on the top of a bookcase. Seated safely at his doxy infested desk, he contemplated revealing to Minerva the notes and their contents. It would be delightful to see Belby sacked. That alone would make it worthwhile.

Something in him recoiled from telling Minerva, however. He could hold it over Belby's head, or simply keep it to himself, the heady knowledge that he could ruin the man's reputation at any time. Yes, he decided, satisfaction spreading through him, he would keep the notebooks a secret. He poured the memory of finding and retrieving the notes into his pensieve where it couldn't be Obliviated away and left his classroom to search for Belby. He still needed that doxycide.

* * *

Harry balled his hands into fists and stared furiously at the Charms book, blinking back stubborn tears. The words blurred on the page, and he shut it, disgusted. He obviously wasn't going to get anything else done, and he just couldn't go back to the dormitory and face Ginny right then, so he piled his papers into his bag, shelved the book and stomped out of the library, barely noticing as Madam Pince admonished him for his treatment of her library. He had a vague idea of confronting Snape, but he didn't know what to confront him about. He stared fixedly at the floor, not knowing where he was going, and not caring much about where he ended up.

Before he realized it, he stood before the one eyed humpbacked witch, and with a sharp jerk, he drew his wand to speak the incantation that would open the hump. He tapped the hump with much greater force than was necessary, whispering, "Dissendium," and watched the hump slip away impatiently, revealing the staircase beyond. He had just clambered into the hole when he heard someone call his name.

"Mr. Potter." Harry dropped his wand. It clattered down the stairs, bouncing off each step on its way to the bottom. He turned for a moment, hesitating whether to retrieve it, but instead chose to set his jaw and face Snape. "Running away?"

Harry snarled as he levered himself out of the humpbacked witch. "No," he retorted defensively. "I don't see how it's any business of yours anyway."

"I'm your teacher, Potter; it's my job to make sure you don't get yourself killed doing anything… stupid." Harry hated the way he paused for effect, and he balled his hands until his nails dug into his palms, his face flushing a livid red.

"Voldemort's dead!" Harry cried. "Who's going to kill me?"

Snape flinched very slightly at the name, but didn't provide an answer. Harry swung himself back into the hole in the witch's hump and stepped deliberately down the stairs, the hair on the back of his neck rising even as he descended. "So you are running away," Snape sneered.

The wand shook in Harry's hand as he gripped it hard enough that his knuckles turned white and bloodless. "I am not running away!" His voice echoed strangely in the underground staircase as he shot up the steps.

"Really," Severus queried derisively, peering down into the tunnel below the witch's hump, "then what were you doing?"

Harry heaved himself out of the hump, glaring up at Snape and trying to speak nonchalantly. "I fancied a walk."

"You're not wearing a robe in this weather?" Severus glanced at his clothing and snorted, "You don't need the Dark Lord to kill you boy, you're perfectly capable of catching pneumonia on your own." He spoke quickly and precisely, gratified at how quickly Potter's hackles rose.

The hump ground shut with an audible groan, trapping the hem of Harry's shirt. He yanked at it and swore as it tore.

"Language, Mr. Potter."

"Why are you even here at all?" Harry begged resentfully.

Severus' smile held no real pleasure in it, only spite. "I think we both know the answer to that."

Harry sputtered and his flush became blotchy. He hadn't intended it that way at all. It had always seemed as if Snape had known what he was doing and where he was, even when he had no reason to know it. Snape's constant ability to find him when he was where he shouldn't be had infuriated him since first year. "Couldn't you just go away?" he snarled.

"No."

"Why not?" he retorted, folding his arms. "Term hasn't started yet; you can't give me detention."

"As I said before, Potter, I'm protecting you from yourself!" He snatched Potter's arm away from his chest and held it firmly in case the boy bolted.

Harry tugged on his arm, clenching and unclenching his fist as his fingers began to tingle. "Let go."

"No."

"What are you going to do, keep me here all night?"

"I'm going to take you back to your common room." Harry flushed mortified at having to face Ginny, and having her see him dragged back to the common room like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

"If you let me go," he said, trying to pry Snape's fingers off his arm, "I will go to my common room alone!"

"No." Severus swatted Potter's other hand away and pulled him forward. "I don't trust you."

"That's funny," Harry seethed, "I don't trust you either."

Severus yanked him forward, pulling him along behind him, his hand tightening around the boy's arm with rage. Something feral glimmered behind his cavernous black eyes, and Harry shivered. He strode purposefully and swiftly down the corridor, and Harry stumbled trying to pull him off balance. "You don't have to trust me, Potter, You just have to obey me."

Harry jerked his arm down when Snape wasn't expecting it, breaking his grip. Taking advantage of his Seeker reflexes and longer legs, he sped down the hallway and turned into a classroom as soon as he was out of sight.

Severus swore and took off after him, wishing he could strangle the boy when he caught him. His boots reverberated around the hallway as he ran, jarring him with every thunderous step.

Harry might have stayed hidden, safe in the shadows of the dusty unused classroom, if he hadn't heaved a sigh of relief as he heard Snape pass his door. It banged open abruptly, and Harry tried to rush past him, but Snape caught him deftly. Harry struggled, being taller, if as weedy, but Snape pushed him back and shut the door. "You are a fool."

Harry didn't dispute him, "And you're a bully." Snape's eyes narrowed into slits as he panted from exertion. "Expelliarmus!" Harry shouted, pointing his wand. The wand sailed out of Snape's hand and Harry caught it.

"Potter!" Snape hissed, "Give it here."

Harry held both wands close to his chest and backed away to the far side of the room. "You can have it back when you let me go."

Snape swore and locked the door. "Language, Professor Snape," Harry mimicked angrily.

Severus' teeth ground together. "Return my wand this instant!"

"I told you," retorted Harry, "I don't trust you."

"What do you hope to get from this Potter?"

"I just want you to let me out and go away," Harry told him sullenly. "The question is what are you trying to get."

Severus stopped and glared. "I want you to stop acting like a spoiled child and go back to your dormitory!"

"Well I can't do that if you're keeping me prisoner here!" Severus ignored the logic of Potter's point while the boy folded his arms across his chest and gazed at him. "You always think I act like a spoiled child," he muttered darkly.

Severus' head snapped up and he paced the room in which he had locked them impatiently. "What would you call asking how my mother died?" he shouted, "what miserable spiteful impulse compelled you to do that?"

Harry used the few inches he had on Snape to full advantage and looked down his nose at him. Snape, who had hardly any nose left to look down, kept his eyes level. "Do you think that's what it was?" Harry asked, almost hurt, "spite?"

Severus' hands moved of their own accord, the fingers twitching as if trying to throttle the young man across the room from him. "What else could it possibly be, Potter?"

Harry stared at him nonplussed, trying to articulate an answer. There were so many things it could be, and so many it was, more than Harry knew the words for. Even the ones he had words for he didn't think he could tell Snape. When he did finally open his mouth, he had no idea what was about to come out of it. "It wasn't spite," he said, and to his humiliation, he started shaking. "I couldn't," he stopped, trying to collect himself. "I couldn't ask about Eileen just to be spiteful." Snape moved as if to interrupt, but Harry cut him off. "Look, I didn't ask about her to hurt you, alright?"

"Then why did you ask Potter?" he punctuated each word with a sharp puff of air as his eyebrows drew closer and closer together.

For one horrifying moment, they both thought Harry was going to cry, but he blinked back the tears stubbornly. "Don't you think I cared about her, at least a little bit?"

Snape stopped pacing and stood in front of the door. "No," he spat jerking his head from side to side, "I don't."

"Well I did care about her, I cared a lot!" At last, two tears ran down his cheeks and he swiped them away angrily. "She was smart, and funny, and she was nice to me, and I didn't know if I would ever get back…" he stopped, uncertain and looked down into Snape's face intently. He wished he'd stopped talking earlier. He never wanted to say any of that to Snape. His voice trembled and he hated it.

Severus stepped back into the doorframe. A thousand insults flashed though his mind, but every time he tried to use one, it disappeared. "I very much doubt you really cared, or you wouldn't have left her and told her to marry my-" he hissed, "to marry Tobias Snape."

"I had to!" Harry yelled, furious at the tears that ran down his face. "I had to! I couldn't stay there and be with her; I had to go back and fight Voldemort!" He shook all over and staggered back to slump against a desk. "I had to leave things the way they happened; I didn't have a choice!" He gazed back at Snape desperately. "I had to go home!"

Severus never lowered his gaze but glared consistently at the young man as he wept, his eyes and nose becoming progressively puffier. "Get a hold of yourself, Potter!"

Harry swallowed forcefully, his nails digging into his arms as he tried to pull himself together, feeling wretched and more than a little embarrassed. He rasped when he spoke at last, and he flushed again. "I couldn't stay."

Severus shot him a look that he was well aware was childish and resentful, and followed it with a recrimination that was equally so. "You shouldn't have gone to her in the first place."

Harry watched him dully, and then smiled a little, but sadly. "I know."

"I don't suppose there was much you could do about it." Harry supposed that was the closest thing to an apology he was ever likely to get, and for Snape it was extremely conciliatory. He rubbed his wrist where a bruise began to form.

"Here," whispered Harry, tossing Snape his wand.

"Thank you," Snape mumbled in reply.

"I'm sorry your mother died, and I'm sorry I asked you about it," Harry said weakly, "but I didn't have anyone else I could ask."

"Apology accepted." Harry made a real effort not to glare in reply.

The first stars were showing in the sky outside the classroom window and Harry rubbed his swollen eyes with the back of his hand. "Let me out?" he asked pathetically.

"Come," Severus said gruffly, I'll take you back to the tower."

They walked out, side by side, stiffly, neither daring to touch the other.


	16. Hermione’s Inductive Reasoning

Chapter Sixteen: Hermione's Inductive Reasoning

All through the train ride up to Hogwarts, something had been nagging at the mind of Hermione Granger. This was perfectly usual for her, as she spent most of her time with ideas and dilemmas developing and coalescing in the back of her mind, but this something was particularly forceful in its demands that she pay attention. Despite that, however, she pushed the trouble down until she had the peace to think about it, safe in her dormitory, and away from Ron, who was extremely distracting.

"Did George tell you he worked out a contract with the Hogwarts Express to sell Canary Creams, Ton-Tongue Toffees, and Edible Dark Marks on the trolley?"

"Really," Hermione returned, jolted out of her reverie and irritated about it.

"Yeah," he said excitedly, much to her relief, he hadn't been getting excited about much of anything lately. "They wanted to sell Skiving Snackboxes too, but the Express said they didn't dare."

Hermione sighed thankfully and Ron huffed at how unreasonable they were. When she dipped her nose back into her book, he had brief unformed notions of tugging her hair to pull her out again. She might need rescue.

It was very difficult to read when her mind kept veering off, so after a few moments, the book remained closed in her lap for the rest of the journey back to school.

* * *

Hermione bantered and smiled her way through dinner in the Great Hall, shoving back the thoughts that clamored for her attention like puppies in a basket, but it was a relief when she could slip away to the tower. Lavender, Parvati, and the other girls in her year stayed in the common room, so she had the dormitory to herself as she sat cross-legged on top of her bedspread, her curtains pulled closed.

It irked her deeply that she did not have all the little bits of information she needed to figure out exactly who her professor, Sebastian Prince was. She couldn't definitively say anything except that he wasn't what he seemed, and that wasn't very helpful or very satisfying.

Carefully, she smoothed the bed spread with the palm of her hands, as if laying out what she did know on the bed before her. She knew that he did not like her, and yet had no overarching prejudice against Muggleborns. She knew he disliked Harry, but that Harry spoke with him in private often. She knew that he had known about Ginny's tendency to prank despite being a new professor. She knew that he was a knowledgeable teacher with a strong grasp of history and real defense, yet she could find no record of him in any Wizarding journals. Most infuriatingly of all, she knew that Harry knew whatever it was she wanted to know.

* * *

"Ginny," Hermione called, motioning to her across the common room, "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Yeah, sure," she shouted back though the noise and chatter of the common room on the first night back. It had been distressingly easy to catch her alone that evening, and Hermione bit her lip. Ginny made her way though the crowded room over to where Hermione stood in the less glairing light of the stairway. "You wanted to talk to me?"

"I wanted to ask for your help," she ran her fingers absentmindedly through the ends of her hair. "I wanted you to help me watch Professor Prince."

"What? Why?" Ginny replied loudly.

Hermione put a finger to her lips and guided her upstairs. "There's something not right about him," she told her, "and I know he's seen me watching him, and I think he suspects I'm trying to figure him out."

"You mean you want me to spy…"

"Not spy," Hermione wheedled, "Not really, just keep an eye on him."

"You're crazy," Ginny told her nodding sharply, avoiding her eyes, "completely mad. You're so used to there being something wrong that you think there's something wrong when things are too quiet! Voldemort's gone," she reassured her, "we don't have to worry about him anymore."

"Not about him, no," Hermione murmured thoughtfully.

"Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"Oh nothing, I'm not worried really, and I don't think he's a dark wizard, but I don't think he's who he says he is." Ginny cocked her head and Hermione furrowed her brow. "Harry knows who he is, I'm sure of it, and he's lying for him!"

Ginny nodded suspiciously, but said, "I'll do it. I'll help you find who he is."

"Thank you!" she exclaimed, running off for the library.

* * *

Hermione poured over the student lists from Durmstrang, and a pair of ponderous volumes entitled "Notable Achievements in Greek Wizardry, 1945-1995" and "Cold War Era Eastern European Magical Advances". Professor Flitwick had let slip that he had spent most of his adult life in Greece, and it was common knowledge where the man claimed to have gone to school. While Madam Pince filled out a form, Hermione slipped the class list into her bag, and followed it with the Beauxbatons and Hogwarts lists for good measure.

With the records secreted away in her bag, she hefted the tomes of regional discoveries and carried them to the librarian's desk to check them out.

She carried her prizes snuggly in her arms as she made her way back to the tower and through the common room. A frustrated frown pulled her face down while she read and reread the books. Lavender had come up into the dorm, and she gave her a sidelong look. "What are you reading?"

Hermione showed her. "The magic of the eastern Mediterranean is terribly interesting, so different from ours."

Lavender raised her eyebrows disgustedly, flipping idly through _Witch Weekly_, and Hermione smiled, convinced that Lavender wouldn't bother to ask what she was doing for at least another week. She pulled the curtains shut and examined the school lists one last time. There were no Sebastian Princes to be found in any of the lists, or any Princes at all more recent than Eileen Prince. There was a Sebastian Abbot, a Sebastian Lefevre, a Sebastian Moreau, and a Sebastian Renard, but none of their pictures remotely resembled the professor. There was also no one of that name to have made his way into the ranks of notable Eastern European or Greek wizards. Hermione filed away the knowledge that a Sebastian Prince probably did not exist to add to her store of facts and decided to add a few more. Snape had disappeared when Prince arrived. McGonagall had been under pressure from the parents to fire him, and she suspected they both had received death threats. Prince and Snape both hated Harry Potter. She dropped her books back into her bag, a slow smile spreading across her face. Sebastian Prince was in all likelihood Severus Snape.

* * *

In the morning, Hermione awoke much less happy with her conclusion than she had been when she had gone to bed with it. She, truth be told, knew nothing except her premises. Her premises told her nothing definite. All she could determine was what they made most likely, and it drove her mad. She fussed with her conclusion all through Transfiguration and Potions, and added two drams of salamander blood instead of one and three quarters to her potion, and spent the next half hour fixing it. Professor Belby had sniffed at her cauldron and given her a detention. She wasn't used to getting detentions, especially not for substandard work.

Actually, Professor Belby had given several people detentions and taken points at least once from every single student, but since all of the houses came out about even, no one minded too much. Hermione had wondered absentmindedly what had put him in such a foul mood.

Yet when she at last caught Harry away from either Ginny or Ron after class had ended for the day, she pulled him out of the common room and into a secluded hallway. "Hermione, what-" he blinked at her bewilderedly.

"I wanted to talk to you about Professor Prince." Harry froze, and Hermione's resolve hardened. "I know he isn't who he says he is."

"Hermione," he pleaded.

"I know he's Snape," she burst out, and then bit her tongue, uncertain, more aware than ever that it was only likely.

Harry grimaced. "You weren't supposed to find out."

A rush of pleasure tingled through her. She had been so worried that she was wrong and that she would look like a fool. "Why not? I know why he can't teach openly, and I'm not about to _tell_ anyone."

Harry sighed with relief. "You can't, you know," he told her, and the doubts that had plagued her all day resurfaced with a vengeance.

"I do want to know a few things," she said tentatively, and Harry set his jaw. "I mean, I can't figure them out."

"Alright," Harry nodded, "if I can tell you, I will." Something about the way he shifted his feet however told Hermione there was a lot that he knew that he could not tell, and she resolved to pry it out of him. "If you tell me how you found out?"

She nodded, and then stopped, wondering if she should use her methods as a bargaining chip, but concluded she might not get anything out of him at all if she tried that. "He didn't act like a new Professor, so I looked him up, and he wasn't on the Durmstrang school lists, or in any of the books on modern Greek and Eastern European magical discoveries in the library, and well, he dislikes you, Harry."

Harry absorbed the information that there were books of modern Greek and Eastern European magical discoveries in the library and that Hermione knew how to find them. He almost sagged with relief, and leaned against the wall to prevent it. She couldn't figure anything else out even if she was Hermione. A rock lifted out of where it had settled in his stomach. A group of Third years passed by them, and he pulled Hermione behind a tapestry that he had seen Filch use and into a secret passage.

"Where does this go?" she asked curiously.

"No idea."

Hermione refrained from asking how he knew about it, annoyed. "Harry, why does Snape look like you?"

Harry flinched and wondered why she had to ask that first. "I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"I just can't, all right?"

"But you know," she pressed.

"Yeah," he acknowledged. "Yeah, I know."

"So why do you know about all of this?"

"I can't tell you that either."

"Well, what can you tell me?" she demanded

He shrugged. "Just what you already know, really."

Her eyes narrowed. "You tricked me." Harry shrugged again, and she glared at him. "Why can't you tell me?" she begged, almost but not quite whining.

"Hermione…"

"Well?"

"They're secret!" he cried, exasperated.

"I'm not going to tell, Harry, I told you that," she tried not to scream.

"I can't tell you," he whispered, leaning away from her, "I just can't. It's not my secret to tell." And he realized as abruptly as he spoke that it wasn't, and he couldn't tell, even if it wouldn't be too horrible trying to explain to his friends and to Ginny how he had suddenly become Snape's father. In some vague impetuous way, the mere idea of it being someone else's secret and not just his own made him want to share it with Hermione, but he squelched the impulse guiltily, his cheeks turning pink.

With the secret being someone else's secret as well as his own, he had a good reason to keep it. It became a sacred trust, a duty. He didn't feel so backed into a corner, queasy stomached at the thought that someone might find out. He could fight to defend the secret. He had a _duty_, even if that duty was to Snape.

"But you _know_!" Hermione exclaimed, and Harry put a finger to his lips imploringly. She ignored him. "Why do _you_ know? If it's Snape's secret, why did he tell you Harry?" She cried, angry, and bewildered, missing great piles of pieces in the puzzle and wishing she could tear them away from her friend, by force if she needed to. "He hates you."

"He didn't tell me," Harry said very quietly, and wondered if he should tell her that he told Snape. Hermione wrinkled her nose and walked off in disgust.

* * *

Hermione kept giving Harry dark looks all throughout Tuesday, and Ron, who had no idea what they might be feuding about, tried to make peace even as they pretended for him that nothing was wrong. Harry, who was himself quite used to being peacemaker for Hermione and Ron, felt no sympathy whatsoever.

Throughout dinner, Harry and Hermione politely passed the rolls and the salt while Ron stared resolutely at his plate. Finally, Ron couldn't take it anymore. "I know you two are fighting!" he shouted, and heads across the Great Hall turned to him. Gryffindors stared astonished, Hufflepuffs stared uncertain, Ravenclaw stared disapproving, but Slytherin stared fascinated, eager to see the unofficial and unwitting leaders of Gryffindor and possibly all the students quarrel. "And you're not telling me what you're fighting about." Ginny aimed a spoonful of mashed potatoes at him. "You're not even telling me you're fighting."

Hermione and Harry waived at him to be quiet as they watched the people stop eating to watch them. "Ron," Hermione spoke concretely, "We aren't fighting-"

"Yes you are," he muttered, "And you shouldn't keep that sort of thing secret." Harry flinched as he spoke.

Despite Hermione's assurances, when she raced out of the Great Hall, Ron's hand clutched in hers, Harry followed, terrified that she would tell him. He excused himself politely from Ginny, even daring a kiss on the cheek, but didn't notice that her eyes followed him, furious to be left out _again_, not even knowing what she was left out _of_, as he slipped into the shadowed hallway and snuck behind his friends.

They headed for the statue of the humpbacked witch and Harry's skin prickled with foreboding. Hermione smiled at Ron, letting go of his hand and tapping the hump. It ground away, protesting the movement. "Are we going to Hogsmeade?" Ron asked, smiling back at her as if he felt that he looked like a fool.

She stepped onto the steep stairwell inside the hump and shook her head. "I just want to use the tunnel." He stepped down beside her, and she whispered something into his ear, not smiling. A blush spread across Ron's face and neck, dying his ears a deep cherry red. Harry too blushed hotly as the witch's hump slammed shut.

As Harry slipped away to the tower, Hermione told Ron nothing whatsoever, and when Ron and Hermione found their way back to the tower, a few brave fourth years whistled at them. Ron grinned widely as he plopped down into one of the overstuffed chairs. Hermione huffed instead and insisted to Lavender and Parvati that nothing happened. As the evening wore on, the other students began to drift out of the common room and up to their beds until at last only Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were left. The four each drifted off to sleep in front of the fire, only to be awoken the next morning by the other students rushing downstairs to breakfast.

Ron stood up, brushed himself off, straightened his robes, and left with them. The other three at least went upstairs to change their clothes.

* * *

Hermione had come around to Harry and Ron's belief that it was best to sit inconspicuously in the back of the class, at least in Professor Prince's class, but as Snape lectured on the ways to hex people in groups, she felt it even more strongly. She watched him nervously, wondering if he could tell somehow that she knew.

Every so often she could see him try not to glare at Harry and Harry try not to glare back. She didn't bother to not glare at Harry. How could he send all of them unprepared back into Snape's class? How dare he give Snape his face?

At the end of class she muttered to Harry that she wanted to talk to him later, and both he and Ron followed her docily enough to the library to study, staring more avidly at the clocks than at their books. Barely fifteen minutes into their study time, the boys leapt from their seats and dashed off, using Quidditch practice as their excuse. They had been humoring her and it annoyed her.

By the time they returned, muddy and exhausted, but cheerful, she had made her way into the common room and was pouring over an ancient runes text. "You two aren't going to get any work done tonight, are you?" she stated more than she asked.

"No," Ron replied grinning.

"Not likely," Harry answered, with the grace to look chagrined.

Hermione groaned, turning back to her book. "You're dripping mud all over the carpet, Ron,"

"Yeah, Dean brought a red rubber ball out because the Ravenclaws were using the Quaffle, and Ron kept landing in the mud trying to catch it."

"Freezing mud," commented Ron, scratching off a drying patch. He visibly steeled himself for standing up again, and climbed up to take a shower.

Harry started to follow, but stopped. "Hermione," he muttered, "I need to talk to you." She nodded, satisfaction sweeping through her, and they walked off together to the empty seventh year boys' dormitory. "Glaring at me isn't going to get me to tell you," he told her sharply as soon as he had shut the door.

"What on earth have you gotten yourself into, Harry," she cried, furious again "that you can't tell me?"

"I haven't gotten myself into anything, really! I just can't tell you!"

"Harry…"

"Why do you want to know so much, Hermione! McGonagall knows about it, and no one's going to die if I don't tell this to you, nothing good is going to happen because you know, do why do you need to know this?"

"I'm worried about you and-"

"No," he stopped her. "Maybe you think you are, but really you just can't bear the fact that you don't know something, and you really hate that I do." He folded his arms across his chest and stood rigidly straight as he spoke very very quietly. "You're so used to us three sharing everything and every secret being big and dangerous, and really no one's right to keep them private, but this isn't like that. You aren't on the trail of something, and I'm not going to tell you just to satisfy your curiosity. It isn't my secret to tell."

"Harry," she insisted.

"And I'm not going to tell you to shut you up either." He almost cheered as she twisted the door handle and stomped out.

As soon as she had shut the door behind her, Hermione slumped against the stone wall of the stairwell, wondering if she was really that jealous that Harry had a secret that he wouldn't tell her. She calmed herself down as best she could before she went back to the common room to collect her books and go to her own dormitory.

Before she could make her way out of the common room, Ginny fell in beside her, hair still dripping and a towel around her shoulders. "Did you find anything out a bout Prince?" she asked, glancing around so make sure no one was listening.

"Oh, Ginny, about that, I was wrong, it's not important." Suddenly Ginny's eyes gleamed, her suspicion peaked. Hermione was lying, and she did know something, which meant that there was something to know.

Of course none of them were telling _her_; she was just the _little sister_. She wasn't one of them, even if she was Harry's _girlfriend_, and she was always being left _behind_ even when she could _help_, just like they had left her behind the year _before_. She was so sick of it, and even as she smiled and nodded at Hermione, she fumed. This time, she swore to herself, she would find out their secret, even if she couldn't find it out from them.

She folded herself into a chair beside her pajama clad brother and glared at the back of his head. "Hey Ginny" Ron laughed nervously as she sat down, "Is it just me or are Hermione and Harry acting really weird?" The scowl disappeared from Ginny's face and a fierce rush of joy filled her, because at least this one time, Ron was left out too.


	17. Wicked Stepmother

Chapter Seventeen: Wicked Stepmother

It was several weeks before Severus had a chance to do more than dip into the purloined journals and skim. His finger traced the binding of his own journal, but he snatched it back, pulling out an unbound packet of notes and a piece of parchment. With two quick jabs, he drew a large "T" on the paper and began putting the names and achievements of his fellow victims of intellectual robbery in the two columns. If he did discover Belby's fraud, he decided he might as well discover all of his fraud, and he never would tackle all of the notes if he gave in and read his own first. Several dull hours later, he glanced at the clock and saw, startled, that it was just before midnight, and he had only found a simplified vomiting elixir, an anxiety inducing drought, three separate acne potions, and a potion to give its imbiber hemorrhoids, none of the earth shattering potions Belby had published. With a sigh he piled the notes and journals in his teaching bag to peruse as his students worked instead of grading papers.

He sat back at his desk, staring at the ceiling. The seconds ticked past until the clock hands met at the number twelve when great _whooshing_ sound came from within his desk, and with a pop, the bottom came off his desk and disintegrated as the desk itself hit the ceiling. A horrible smell filled the room, and he realized horrified, that someone had mixed Dungbombs and Weasley fireworks and put them into his desk with a timer spell. The desk crashed back down into the middle of his office, and he coughed, gasping against the pungent reek spilling from it. Grasping the handle of his office door with relief, he yanked it down and fled the room, sputtering and swearing, and sped down the halls to fetch Filch.

* * *

In the morning, Ginny grinned, seeing Professor Prince disheveled, bleary eyed, and trying not to nod off over his plate. "What's wrong with him?" Harry asked, pointing his thumb in the direction of the head table.

Ron smirked. "Wish it happened to him before our class." Harry looked up at Snape apprehensively, and then at Ron.

"I'm sure," Ginny told all three of them confidently, "his night was a blast."

"I hope you didn't have anything to do with that, Ginny," Hermione admonished.

"Course I did."

Harry rubbed the side of his head. "Oh, Ginny."

"It's not like he didn't deserve it," Ron defended.

"Besides, he'll be too tired in class today to be too nasty."

Harry shook his head at the rather exhausted glare Snape was sending his way, and Hermione remarked dubiously, "No doubt."

"He has the Gryffindor first years first thing this morning. I had to think about them," she winked.

Hermione favored her with a sidelong look. "So your motives were entirely altruistic."

"Yeah," she grinned unrepentantly, "altruistic."

* * *

That evening, Harry slogged back into the castle with the rest of his double Herbology class, his toes frozen inside his boots. Inside, the mud on his shoes started to thaw and track across the floor. A ripe fertilizer smell rose from all of the class as a group. Harry wrinkled his nose as people walked past, pinching their noses and covering their mouths. The Hufflepuffs headed off down a narrow corridor down to their common room, and most of the Gryffindors did the same, tramping up to theirs. Ron, Hermione, Parvati, Hannah Abbot, and Ernie Macmillian broke away and trooped together up to the fifth floor to the prefects' bathroom. They lined up one after another, Hanna first, and Harry last.

As each finished bathing, they drifted away to the Great Hall until Harry waited for only Parvati to finish. His stomach rumbled and he wondered if there would be any warm food left by the time Parvati had finished. Harry rapped his knuckles against the door. "Parvati, are you anywhere near done?"

"Give me a minute, I've got dragon dung in my hair, you know," came her muffled voice.

"Yeah, well can you hurry it up a bit?"

"No!"

Harry tapped his foot impatiently. "Come on,"

"Shut it, Harry!"

Harry groaned, leaning back against the wall behind him. He stared up at the ceiling, kicking absentmindedly at the stone floor. When he looked down again, he found himself looking right at Snape, and he was angry.

"Do you have any idea how long I had to spend last night cleaning up your little prank, Potter?"

"Er…"

"I did not get to bed until three O' Clock in the morning," his voice had become quiet and precise, dangerously so, "and Mr. Filch is still attempting to set right the mess you made of my office."

"Er…"

"I presume you're proud of your achievement."

"What are you talking about?"

Snape opened his mouth and closed it again. "I'm referring to the shambles you made of my office and bedroom, Potter!" he thundered, a bit of spittle flecking his lip.

"I didn't do anything to your office and bedroom!" Harry shouted back, thoroughly confused.

"Don't lie to me!" Snape hissed, moving closer until their noses nearly touched. "You set Dungbombs and fireworks off in my desk and under my bed! They hit the ceiling, both of them!"

Suddenly Ginny's comments earlier about Snape's night being a blast made a great deal more sense. "I haven't even been in your office-"

"You turned my desk and my bed into kindling!"

"I don't even know your password; how would I have gotten into your office to do anything?"

Snape rested his weight on his back foot, leaning away from Harry. "I'll find out how. Rest assured, I'll find out how, and then I'll see to it that you're expelled."

Harry scoffed. "Good luck."

In an instant, Snape had his face right next to Harry's again. "Is that a challenge, Potter?"

Harry stood rigidly, stepping away from the wall, forcing Snape back and gazing at him expressionless as he almost overbalanced. "I'd like to see you try, yeah. Even if I had blown up your office, I don't think you could get me expelled over it."

"You don't think vandalizing a teacher's office and living quarters, not to mention blowing up among other things a set of seventh year essays, which you will all have to redo, is sufficient grounds to have you tossed out of the school?"

"I killed Voldemort!" Harry almost started laughing. "Unless I do something really evil, you can't do anything to me." He couldn't hold back a tired grin. "Besides, you've been trying to get me thrown out since I first came here and you haven't managed it yet, and anyway, _I didn't do it_!"

"I told you not to lie to me, Potter! This has you written all over it."

"What are you talking about? I've never done anything like that!"

Snape snorted, folding his arms and stepping back again. "Then tell me, Potter, if you didn't do this, who did?"

Harry shifted awkwardly. "I don't know," he lied, "why would I?"

Severus' eyes narrowed, and a nasty smile spread across his face as he watched Potter trying to keep his expression guilt free. "So you didn't do it Potter."

"Yeah, I just told you that."

As Harry replied, Parvati opened the door and padded out, her robes and shoes spelled clean. As she walked, she waved her wand over her hair. "_Siccus exsorbeo_," she incanted, and a slight slurping sound came from her wand, and the water from her hair pulled itself into her wand in a thin wet thread. Harry propped the door open with his foot and began to step inside, but Snape held him back.

"But you do know who blew up my office and bed. You know exactly who did it."

"No," Harry denied, but Snape just folded his arms. "I didn't do it, so you can go away now."

"Detention, Potter, for your abominable state of attire," he snarled as he pivoted, listing slightly, "you smell like _dung_."

Harry caught the implication as Snape stalked off and sighed loudly and stepped into the bathroom, closing and latching the door behind him. Pins and needles shot through his foot as he walked across the marble floor. It had gone numb holding the door open.

* * *

By the time Harry had finished his bath, which was a short one, dinner in the Great Hall had finished, so he detoured into the kitchens on the way to the Gryffindor common room. When he entered, a stack of bowls and plates stacked precariously in one hand and a plate of pastries in the other, Ginny rushed over to help him carry everything inside. "I heard Parvati telling Lavender that Prince cornered you outside the prefects' bathroom" she told him, taking away the pastries and eating one herself. "Bad luck, that."

"Awful, he gave me a detention."

Her eyebrows met in the middle as she wrinkled her forehead. "What for?"

"Needing a bath, apparently."

"Git."

"You want to watch yourself, Ginny, he's looking to expel whoever put the Dungbombs and fireworks in his office and bedroom."

"Don't worry," she told him nonchalantly, sitting down next to him and helping him put his meal on a table near the fire. "He won't catch me." She grinned carelessly, laying back over the arm of her chair, her head hanging off the side nearest him. "Besides, it's like Fred and George used to say, I know where the line is. I'm only putting a toe or two over it, nothing worth expulsion."

"You blew up the seventh year essays. We're going to have to redo them."

"Sorry," she had contrived to look chagrined, "I didn't mean to do that to all of you. Rotten luck, he should just forget it, it isn't any of your fault."

Harry swallowed a mouthful of mashed potatoes. "Yeah, but Prince doesn't forget anything."

"I told you not to worry," she exclaimed, "he won't find out I did it."

Harry shrugged noncommittally and went back to eating. "Yeah, I guess."

As soon as he had finished eating, Hermione signaled at him that it was time to begin his patrol. Harry didn't like patrolling in the evenings, especially because he couldn't take any more than five points away from any student he caught. He poked his head boy badge, which was hanging lopsided and unpolished against his shoulder and followed Hermione out of the common room. Being head boy, he supposed, was much more trouble than it was worth, which was why it had to be dressed up as a privilege.

Hermione, with her deep abiding affection for the rules and extensive knowledge of rule breaking, an unusual, and in Harry's opinion dangerous combination, had written the duty roster with prefects guarding the kitchens, all of the secret passages, and the Room of Requirement. Fortunately for Harry's state of mind, she and he guarded the humpbacked which themselves, and she hadn't betrayed its location to Filch.

"You're watching the kitchens tonight, Harry," she told him brightly, and he shook his head to himself, wondering if being head girl energized her in some way. "So you can take those back to the kitchen while you're down there," she glanced at the stack of dirty dishes in his arms.

* * *

Friday started out about as bad as it was possible for an ordinary school day to begin, with a letter delivered with a nasty nip from Bodmin, detailing the time and place for his detention that evening with Snape. Harry put his head in his hands, and passed the note to Ron, who had asked to see it. "What the bloody hell did he give you detention for?"

"Needing to bathe," Ginny answered for Harry flippantly.

"Needing to… what? We all needed to bathe; Sprout had us up to our elbows in dragon manure!"

"I remember. The whole class smelled really revolting coming into the common room."

"Shut it, Ginny."

"Shut it yourself, Ron."

"Oh, shut it, both of you."

"Hermione," Ron exclaimed, affronted.

"Yes, well some of us are trying to eat our breakfast in peace."

After they had finished eating, they wandered away to their respective classes. Hermione had Arithmancy, and Harry and Ron had a free period over which Ron had been gloating for months. For the first time in a long while, Harry didn't have an essay to do, or a homework assignment he had to do for his next class, or any work at all really. Unfortunately, his lack of pressing work simply gave him the opportunity to fret about his upcoming detention. Disgusted with himself, he absently took out the notebook into which he scribbled Quidditch plays.

After his last and only class of the day (charms, which he felt very good about, having just not only made his hedgehog tap-dance across the desk but twirl its cane as well), Harry left Ron and Hermione and headed down to the dungeons before catching himself and climbing back up to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. It was with some astonishment and no little trepidation that he suddenly realized he hadn't received a detention from Snape all year until then.

He knocked on the door uncertainly and Snape snapped at him to come in. Snape led Harry the few feet to his office and pushed him through the door. The room was mercifully free of the odor of Dungbombs, but what had once been the desk had been swept away, and in its place was a large cardboard box. "What are you waiting for Potter, get to it."

"To what, exactly?"

Putting together the desk in the box you're staring at." Snape folded his arms across his chest and sent him a piercing glare. Harry supposed Snape thought it was obvious.

Severus moved to stand against the wall next to his bookcase and pulled out a journal at random out of his pile of stolen notes and found that it was his own. He rubbed his finger over the cover, sparing a silent curse for Belby. The miserable fraud hadn't just stolen his ideas, whatever they may have been, but had lost him his job. Employers didn't typically keep researchers around who couldn't remember from one day to the next what they had been working on for the past several months. The job had paid much better than his teaching job too.

"Couldn't you just magic it together?" Harry grumbled, using a letter opener to cut through the packing tape and pulling out the instructions.

"I could," Severus remarked thoughtfully, "and then I could have you spend your detention scraping Drooble's Best Blowing Gum off the undersides of classroom desks."

"No," Harry replied, wincing slightly. "This is perfectly fine." He laid out the different sized pieces of particleboard, the little bottle of wood glue, and a screwdriver he had transfigured out of a spare quill and set to work.

"Don't the professors here usually…" Harry trailed off, trying to screw the metal racks for the rolling shelf under the desk without having the whole construction, held together with half dried wood glue, fall down on top of him.

"Usually what?" Severus snarled, surfacing from his journal.

"Have, well, good desks," Harry stuttered. "You know, the nice kind with real wood. This one isn't even new." There had been dried glue already on the sides of the pieces.

"This is my desk from home, Potter," Severus spoke though clenched teeth, "I have brought it here until a replacement can be made. One has been ordered, and you can tell whichever of your compatriots who thought it clever to put Dungbombs and fireworks in the bottom of my desk and under my bed that the school had to pay several hundred Galleons to replace each and to ship them here, and that when I locate the student who caused this, not only will that student be expelled, but that student's parents will receive the bill!"

Harry blanched, thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's barren Gringotts vault and hoped Ginny didn't come up with any other pranks to play any time soon. "I'll pass the word along," he retorted, angrily, "but for all I know, it could be Peeves,"

"Peeves never does anything that he thinks is severe enough to get him turned out! No, whoever did this was a student, and I don't believe for a moment that you don't know which one."

"If you had any evidence I knew who blew up your desk, I'd have a lot more than a detention to worry about," Harry shot back, sliding the last drawer into place. "Which means you don't know anything, and you're hoping to bully me into telling you something, but I can't, because _I don't know_!"

Severus snorted skeptically and returned to his journal, but Potter interrupted him again. "I finished your desk," he pointed out. "Can I go now?"

"_Duro_," he cast in response, hardening the wood glue with a jab of his wand. "Get out."

Harry mock saluted and walked stiffly to the door while Snape, not to be outdone moved to open it with a sarcastic bow, complete with a smile and a flourish of the hands. Before he could leave, Harry stood in the doorway and watched as Filch stumbled past, muttering about gruesome consequences for the next student to cross his path, six light bulbs rolling on the floor behind him, squeaking about Ravenclaws and transfiguration. Harry and Snape couldn't help but turn to each other and share a bemused glance before they caught themselves and looked down.

"Before you go, Potter," Snape said with a small smile that boded very badly for the state of Harry's nerves, gesturing for him to return to his office. Harry turned to lean against the desk he had so recently put together. "This student prankster isn't you-"

"I told you that."

"Shut up."

"Fine."

"The prankster isn't you, it isn't Mr. Weasley, he lives in your pocket, it isn't Granger, she's too fond of order, but it is someone you're willing to protect."

"I'm not protecting anyone."

"I told you to shut up."

"Git."

"Another detention. As I was saying, it isn't one of your two sidekicks-"

"Ron and Hermione are _not_ sidekicks-"

"Ten points from Gryffindor for interrupting again. It isn't one of your two sidekicks, but you feel the need to protect whoever it is. Of course, the worst mischief maker currently attending Hogwarts is your girlfriend." Harry shifted awkwardly and tried to keep his face blank. "So it is Miss Ginevra Weasley."

"No!"

"But how would you know that, Potter, unless you knew who did it?" Snape demanded triumphantly.

"You have no proof!" Harry raged. "You can't do anything-"

"I can keep an eye on her," he smirked, "and wait for her to slip up."

"You've been watching me for seven years," Harry reminded him with a smirk of his own, "and you haven't been able to get me yet." Snape's smirk fell away, and Harry forced down a grin. "I'll tell her you're watching."

"You do that. Perhaps it will keep her from blowing anything else up."

Harry pushed himself away from the desk and almost leapt the few steps to the door, but then stopped. "I thought you should know," he said, turning his head back to Snape, "Hermione knows about you."

"What?" Snape swooped down on him and backed him into the corner. "How dare you tell her?"

"I didn't!" Harry shouted. "She figured it out on her own."

"And how, pray tell, did she do that?" Snape hissed dangerously.

"She checked the Durmstrang class lists." Snape swore. "And she checked the Beauxbatons and Hogwarts lists too." Snape swore even more foully. "And some books about modern magical advances in Greece and Eastern Europe." Snape swore again, and Harry wondered if he could get away with giving the professor a detention.

Wrinkling his nose, Snape stared right at him. "Knowing Miss Granger, she confronted you, hoping for conformation of her hypothesis?"

Harry bristled. "Yeah, well, when your best friend comes up to you and says 'I know he's Snape,' it's a bit difficult to bluff your way out."

Snape put his hands on either side of Harry and rested them against the wall, trapping him. "What exactly does Granger know?"

"She knows that you're really you," at a glare from Snape, he continued quickly, "and that's all, I swear."

"Anything else?" he growled.

"She knows I know."

"_And_?"

"She knows something else is going on."

Severus' head snapped up and his stomach dropped. "Then she will find out what it is."

"Well it's eating her up that she doesn't know, yeah, but I think I managed to shame her into not snooping."

"That girl _has_ no intellectual shame."

"Yeah, that's what I told her." he retorted testily. "I think I made her feel guilty about prying."

Snape stared at him, taken aback, and for a moment, he almost looked impressed. Harry felt vaguely flattered and appalled at the same time.


	18. Balls and Broomsticks

Chapter Eighteen: Balls and Broomsticks

Snape saved Harry's detention until the middle of February, the evening before the Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Quidditch match, which Harry thought was dreadfully unfair, and told Snape exactly that. Snape must have been feeling particularly indulgent though, because he just smiled spitefully instead of giving him another detention. Harry's birthday present to him sat unobtrusively on his desk. When he had picked it out, Harry had realized that apart from being nasty to his students, he didn't know what Snape liked. In the end, he had remembered his tirade on Roman names and bought him a book about the later Roman emperors. Snape hadn't said a word about it, and he wasn't reading it, but Harry took its mere presence as a good sign.

The enchantments on Drooble's Best Blowing Gum that made the bubbles hang around for hours also prevented magical cleanup of gum stuck to the undersides of desks. Most teachers didn't notice the gum much, because _they_ didn't sit in the class desks, and Harry didn't think the desks in the Defense classroom had been cleaned underneath since Snape had gone to school, or possibly McGonagall. He stoically set to work using a scraper to pry loose the gum and Mrs. Scower's Magical Mess Remover to clean under it. He supposed there were fewer disgusting detentions available to Defense Against the Dark Arts professors than there were to Potions professors.

Halfway through the desks, Harry stopped and brought up something Hermione had hissed in his ear when he had already been trying not to think about it. "It really isn't fair giving me a detention right before the match," he informed Snape tersely for the second time.

Snape glared sideways at him over a leather notebook. "Did I ever give you any indication that I care whether or not you think I am fair, Potter?"

"No," Harry acknowledged, but he plowed on. "But I did think you wanted to keep your identity secret. Somebody's bound to guess that you're you if you do things like give the Gryffindor team captain a detention the night before the match against Slytherin."

Snape turned a page in his journal. "The most observant of the students has already guessed. Potter, there's nothing I can do about that."

"Yeah, and the whole school will guess if you keep acting like a biased git!"

"I'm beginning to think you might actually like detention," he spat, deliberately keeping his eyes on his journal, his concentration slipping.

Harry went back to cleaning the desks, a glower on his face that would have made Snape proud. "Just thought I'd give you the opportunity to spend time with your father."

Snape stared at the journal, so startled that he dropped it and he had to retrieve it. He read something in it again, growled, and leapt from his chair, his journal clutched so hard that his nails dug half moons into the leather, and stalked out of the room. Harry kept his triumphant smile to himself for a moment, before a cold queasiness spilled into him. He cleaned the rest of the desks in peace, unwilling to give Snape an excuse to reassign the detention.

* * *

Severus paced furiously in front of the gargoyle, trying to decide whether or not he should burst into Minerva's office and show her the incontrovertible evidence of Belby's Lockheartian style trickery. He gnashed his teeth as his ire climbed, his thumb holding his old potions journal open to, of all Belby's stolen achievements, Wolfsbane potion.

Of course, he supposed someone had to have invented it.

The sheer magnitude of the theft warred in his consciousness with the idea that he had invented the Wolfsbane potion. All of Belby's fame, his prestige wasn't built on the invention of some anonymous fellow brewer, an abstract victim, but from him. It was his work, his long hours hunched over a cauldron fiddling with proportions, and he deserved the credit for it!

Yet he didn't want Wolfsbane connected to him. He didn't want to be the one to have invented it. He had no altruistic motive, and not much of a financial one either, to have invented it. Likely he had done it in an extended fit of phobic self indulgence.

He stomped peevishly across the carpeted hallway and back again, scowling at the gargoyle while a little dissenting voice of reason told him that Minerva had probably already gone to bed for the night. He unclenched his hands forcefully, straightening out cramped fingers. In truth, he couldn't really claim the potion anyway, even if he really wanted to, without losing what cover he had left. Besides, he wanted to see the man suffer, and he wouldn't be able to watch if Belby were to rot in Azkaban for fraud.

He was pettily and ineffectively justifying his wish not to rush to Minerva like a sulking child, but he didn't care. When she strode out of her office and saw him, she asked him if anything was the matter. "No," he said shortly, and walked off. On his way to his quarters, he passed his classroom and leaned in. "Get out," he growled at the boy inside, who fled, two desks still to be cleaned.

* * *

Half of the Gryffindor Quidditch team woke up with colds on the day of the match, but to Harry's delight, so did the entire Slytherin team. Steam billowed out of their ears at breakfast from the liberal doses of Pepperup potion Madam Pomfrey had encouraged them to drink.

The Gryffindor team sat facing the Slytherin table, already in their Quidditch gear, their brooms propped up next to the chairs. They weren't taking any chances that the Slytherin team might attempt a little sabotage.

Harry draped a protective hand on top of his own broom. Firebolts were still the best brooms in the world after eight years running, and Harry ran a finger over his broomstick with a sort of proprietary pride, but without the affection he had held for the broom's identical predecessor. He almost hadn't wanted to get another firebolt after the war, but he hadn't wanted to get another owl either, and yet he had both the broomstick and the owl.

They made their way together out onto the pitch. Outside, snow was falling, the big wet clumpy kind that didn't stick, but melted, turning the pitch into icy mud. A fierce wind blew through them. If the weather were warmer, it might have been called a breeze, but it seemed to find all the gaps in their clothing and blow cold air and slush right into them.

Ron's head looked like a campfire with the steam curling around it, and Ginny had stuffed so many jackets and jumpers on under her Quidditch robes that her top half had taken on a globe shape. Harry shivered.

Just before the mach was set to begin, Harry waved his team over and they clustered around him. "Alright," Harry tried to say decisively. "We can't just win out there; we have to win by a lot, because Slytherin's way ahead of us in the running for the cup." The morning of the Slytherin vs. Hufflepuff Quidditch match, Branstone had tripped and fallen, walking alone down a staircase and had broken her arm. Harry hadn't been able to bring himself to feel to sad about it after what she had done to his team, but then, she also hadn't been around to do the same thing to the Slytherin team, who had won and won well. Besides, Branstone had told Madam Pomfrey that she was sure someone had hexed her, but she didn't know who. Blatant Slytherin cheating, the school had whispered.

"Shouldn't be too hard," Ginny said confidently, spreading her arms. "It's not like they're any good."

"We have to win by at least ninety points, which means we have to keep the Quaffle out of our hoops long enough for me to catch the Snitch," Harry continued. Ron sneezed. He remembered how Fred and George used to make fun of Oliver Wood's speeches and how annoying he had found them. At least Oliver hadn't sounded like an idiot.

Ron sneezed again. "I'm up to it," he reassured them, his nose bright red. Richie Coote nodded, conjuring himself a handkerchief and blowing his own nose. "Goyle and Bulstrode are too thick to figure out which part of the bat to hold," he assured the team. "We can keep the Bludgers from bothering anyone this time."

"Captain, shake hands," Madam Hooch boomed. Since Urquhart's graduation at the end of Harry's sixth year, Malfoy had become team captain, but word was, no one on the team really listened to him. They eyed each other darkly as they grabbed each other's hands, jerked them up and down once, and yanked their hands back as quickly as possible.

Harry nodded his team sharply, swallowing nervously as they mounted their brooms. When Madam Hooch gave the signal, they squelched into the air. Harry sped into the air high above the pitch to keep an eye out for the snitch. He supposed Seeker was the best position for the captain to play, because he could see everything.

He spotted Malfoy's narrowed eyes from across the pitch, and he doubted he would watch the game at all and instead watch Harry. Sometimes Harry wondered if Slytherins relied on sheer meanness to win.

"Slytherin's put together a radically difficult lineup this year," Zacharias Smith drawled, "making Harper, the reserve seeker, a chaser and adding two girls, at long last, their Keeper Davis, and their Beater, Bulstrode." Harry didn't think the lineup was that different, really, except that Davis could fly. Millicent Bulstrode was exactly like Crabbe only a girl. "However, some people feel the Gryffindor lineup is becoming stale. They only have one new member this year, and he was a substitute before. It's said that the mark of a poor captain is his inability to know when to shake up his team." Harry gripped his broom handle that much harder.

"Vaisey has the Quaffle and he's heading for the hoops, but Robins blocked him, but look, he passed it to Harper, who's streaking for the hoops, and Weasley catch- fumbles it, it's in, ten points to Slytherin!" Harry swore softly, his eyes darting around the pitch for the Snitch as Malfoy waved his arms and made a small happy loop-de-loop.

"Vaisey's flying for the hoops, but I don't see the Quaffle, what is he doing?" Zacharias announced as Ron tried to block him, but he flew behind Ron. "I don't believe it, he was hiding it under his robes, and he scored! Ten more points to Slytherin." But Madam Hooch's whistle rang out. "And a penalty shot, of course, for Gryffindor."

Ron sent the Slytherin Chaser a rude gesture and he just grinned as he flew back to his side of the pitch. "Weasley's in possession, she passes it to Robins. Thomas and Weasley are flanking her, she passes to Thomas, who passes back to Weasley, she throws, and scores! twenty to ten in Slytherin's favor."

Harry waved to Ginny, and she winked. He grinned. "Thomas is in possession. He's flying straight for Davis, what is he doing?" He tosses it above her, it falls, but Robins catches it, she was behind Davis! She shoots, she scores! And the score is Twenty to Twenty."

Take that, Zacharias, he thought. His lineup was stale, was it? He circled the pitch while Malfoy's narrowed eyes watched him lazily. Even with his gloves, his hands had gone numb holding onto his broom. A flash of gold winked in the corner of his eye, and he turned sharply after it. Malfoy caught sight of it and raced after it too, a smirk on his face because he started closer to it. Harry accelerated, trying to catch up with him. "It looks like the Seekers have seen the Snitch!" Exclaimed Zacharias eagerly. "Malfoy's in the lead." But Harry was gaining. He sped up to be even with Malfoy, who elbowed him hard in the ribs. Harry swerved, but pulled himself back to dive after the Snitch. Yet, as both Seekers dove, the Snitch darted up and out of their reach and out of sight. Harry pulled himself out of the dive, and Malfoy trailed off to the side of the field. The whistle blast echoed over the pitch. "That's the penalty to Gryffindor for one Seeker fouling another, neither of whom managed to catch the Snitch."

"Robins has the Quaffle," came Zacharias' voice, and she dodges a Bludger, and Vaisey, but Davis blocks, no, she passed it to Thomas, and he throws, yes, it went though the far hoop, twenty to thirty to Gryffindor!" Harry drove his fist into the air as the Gryffindor stands roared with cheers.

"Vaisey in possession." Harry flew around the edge of the pitch, hoping for a glimpse of the Snitch. A trail of melting snowflakes dripped down into his robes, and he shivered, taking his hands off his broom to blow warm air into them. "He shoots, aww, but Weasley blocks it!" Harry mouthed "good job" to Ron, but he didn't think he saw it. Even if he had been looking, Harry didn't think anyone could see what he had been saying from across the pitch.

"Thomas is back in possession," Zacharias boomed, but no one paid any attention. Harry had seen the snitch, and he dove after it. Malfoy dove after it too, but he was too far away, there was no way he could catch up. The whole pitch had stopped to watch as he and Malfoy raced through the air, and Harry felt everyone take a breath as his hand closed around the struggling golden ball. "Potter has caught the Snitch!" The announcement was almost drowned out with the cheers from Gryffindor and the boos from Slytherin. The Hufflepuffs stayed mute, and Harry, had he thought about it, would have said they were sulking. Gryffindor's victory had taken them out of the running for the cup. "That would make it one hundred eighty to, no wait, one hundred ninety to twenty, Gryffindor!" While Davis had been busy gaping at Malfoy and Harry and no one else had been paying any attention to him, Dean had scored.

* * *

Severus recalled his first flying lesson with some distaste as he watched Potter fly after the Snitch. Misfortune and Madam Richthofen's carelessness had conspired to give him a school broom that was not only old, but on its last legs as well, the anti-jinx charms breaking down. As soon as Richthofen's back had turned, Black had whispered, "Watch this," to his friends and a hex at the broom in Snape's hand. It had shuddered and begun to twitch and buck as soon as he had tried to mount it. His fellow first years had roared with laughter as he tried to fly with the hexed broomstick until he had thrown it aside and stormed off, saying he never really wanted to learn to fly anyway. Richthofen naturally assumed he was a horrible flyer. He had proved her wrong at the remedial lesson she had inflicted upon him in lieu of detention. It was then that she had called him a natural.

The very thought that he might have natural affinity for flying because James Potter had a natural affinity for flying made him all the gladder that he had never been fond of playing Quidditch. In his first year when Richthofen had begged him to try out for his house teem when he was old enough had driven him into a rage, and he had told her that if his performance was adequate, then he was leaving. Suddenly he had to stop himself from wondering why if he had never wanted to play he felt so fiercely glad that he could have if he wanted to.

A bushy haired girl plopped herself down on the bench next to him as he watched the Snitch foil both Seekers. "Hello, professor," she mumbled.

"Go away, Miss Granger."

"I, I," Hermione nodded to herself almost unnoticeably. "I just wanted to say that I know who you are, Sir."

"Are you in your own clumsy adolescent way trying to threaten me?" he hissed.

"No!" she cried, startled, "No, I…"

"Go away, then."

"What I meant was I'm not going to tell anyone!" she insisted. "I'm going to keep your secret."

"Why should I have any faith in your discretion," he asked rhetorically, "when you had so recently set yourself to ferreting out my secrets?"

"It wasn't as if I was spying," she mumbled defensively. "I was using information from the library that anyone could access."

"That does not change the fact that you went looking for it in the first place, Miss Granger," he bit out. "Get out of my sight." Hermione stood up, threw him one last dirty look, and walked away to sit three benches above him. He clenched his teeth together, feeling her eyes on the back of his neck until Potter caught the Snitch and she descended to congratulate the victorious team.

* * *

The cold treatment Ginny had been receiving from many of the seventh years in Gryffindor house for blowing up Prince's desk and thus forcing them to redo their essays disappeared that evening with the victory party. After all, they had already written the essays once, so it wasn't too hard to write them again. It was certainly nothing worth shunning one of the winning Quidditch team's members over.

Ginny, a Quidditch banner tied around her neck like a cape, handed Harry a butterbeer, throwing a hand around his waist. "So, captain, we're in the lead for the cup."

"Yeah."

"Comfortably so."

"Yeah."

"It's just between us and Ravenclaw now."

"Well, if Slytherin did really really well against Ravenclaw next month…"

Ginny laughed. "Let me savor the victory for a little while."

"They'd have to do really really well."

"That's better. Besides, did you see Malfoy's face? He looked like you made him swallow a lemon, whole."

"Yeah, I saw him," Harry tried very hard not to smile, but it was a loosing battle.

"Maybe he'll sulk for a little while and hide in a corner."

"Or he could decide to challenge me to a duel."

"Yeah, that really does sound more like Malfoy, doesn't it?"

Harry snorted, glancing around at the food covered table in front of the fireplace. "Did you bring this all up from the kitchens by yourself?"

"I snuck it in from Hogsmeade," she smiled. "And speaking of Hogsmeade," she began and smiled at him again.

"What about it?"

"Next weekend's a Hogsmeade weekend."

"Yeah, I know. Ron was talking about it."

"It's Valentines day Sunday."

"Yeah."

Ginny glared at him. "Would you like to go with me?"

"Err… yeah, yeah of course."

"By the way, I broke up a few acid pups and put them inside the éclairs, so you might want to stay away from them."

"But Ron's got an éclair right now."

"Yeah, he likes them."

"Acid pops?"

"No."


	19. Not Yet

Chapter Nineteen: Not Yet

Ginny slipped out of the common room and the Fat Lady didn't even open her eyes as she swung open. Some nights, she snuck around the school just to sneak around the school and to have a little time alone in places she wasn't supposed to be. Hogwarts had always seemed so different at night, with every one but her safely tucked away in their respective dormitories, more magical, more like _Hogwarts_, as if the school hid something of itself when the walls were full of people. There was a great feeling of quiet to the stone corridors, an emptiness that seemed to compel her own silence, urging her to search and find the school's secrets, but not to tell them, to lock them away again even in the day.

Over the summer, the feeling had lingered into the sunlight, and she had almost been reluctant to mend the battle scars a long with the professors and the other students who had stayed. Some of the marks should remain.

Her heart sped up and she smiled as she made her way down from the tower, down through the myriad of twisting corridors and into the middle parts of the castle where there were no windows and no moon beams for her to see her way with. There was safety in the deep darkness, for if she couldn't see anything by the moonlight, neither could anyone see her.

She peaked around a corner into the blackness, hearing soft snuffling sounds and seeing the luminous yellow eyes of Mrs. Norris, searching for students like her. Tiptoeing back down the hall she had come, she circled around to avoid the foul cat. Older students were almost never caught out of bed as the younger years were, because those who continued to sneak around knew how to get way.

She smiled complacently as she made her way lower into the school, but stopped when she heard a sniffling very different from Mrs. Norris. "What're you doing here, kid?" she asked curiously, standing next to the first year holding up his wand, lit with a weak _lumos_.

He stopped crying at once, sucking in great ragged breaths as he struggled to stem the flow from his eyes. "What are you doing here?" he returned suspiciously.

"I just needed to get away from my house for a while, be alone, but I asked you first, didn't I?"

"'m not doing anything," he muttered, scowl at her, but he was still gulping and trying not to snivel, so she didn't even give the sour expression a thought.

"Except crying?"

His scowl deepened and a few tears fell, splattering against the floor. "'m not crying."

"Course you're not," she said cheerfully, "that's just dew falling off your face."

"I'm not!" he shouted, and she put a finger to her lips.

"Filch is about, and Stalk has patrolling duties on Fridays," she winced.

"I'm not crying," he hissed.

"Will you tell me what's wrong?"

He glared at her again and then sniffed hard. "Some of the fourth years keep taking my stuff and hiding it," he muttered, "and I keep getting detentions when I don't find my books in time for class, and then everyone teases me, and the old first year are just rotten to the new first years like me, and I had to go to class this morning because someone hid my shoes…" She glanced down at his feet, but she couldn't see anything except his face in the pitiful light of his spell.

She patted his back awkwardly as he started crying again in earnest. "Do you know how to do a summoning charm? No, you don't do you; you don't learn those until fourth year." He shook his head. "Well, if you flick your wand like this," she took his lit wand, "and say 'accio' and then whatever they took, it will come flying back to you."

"What if they hide it outside the dorms?" he asked quietly, but steadily.

"My boyfriend had a summoning charm so powerful that he summoned his broom from his dorm all the way to the grounds. You'd have to practice to get that good, though."

"Oh," he smiled, but his eyes were still puffy, and his face covered in blotches. "Thanks." He flicked his wand the way she had showed him and she saw his house badge in the still lit tip.

"You're a Slytherin?" she asked, taken aback.

His jaw set and his chin tightened. "Yeah," he replied defensively. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"Hey!" she said brightly, "do you want me to show you how to sneak into the kitchens?"

When, later in the school year, several of his sixth year house mates were griping bout the terrible Ginny Weasley, Matthew Newbury told them that she wasn't so bad, which only made them complain about him instead.

* * *

Saturday the thirteenth of February was one of those bright sunny winter days where the sunlight never seemed to touch the ground or make the air any warmer. Harry glared at the mirror, running a wet comb through his hair over and over trying to get it, if not flat, at least not quite as prickly. Ron snickered at him. "Primping, are you?"

"Shut it, would you?"

"Look mate, it isn't like she doesn't know what you look like."

"No idea why she likes it though," Seamus called out from inside the dormitory.

Harry grunted, throwing down the comb, giving up in disgust. "You can shut it too," Ron shouted back in his defense. Neville and Dean threw their pillows at Seamus, who tossed them back and aimed his own at Ron's head.

Harry straightened his shirt collar compulsively as they poured out into the common room. Hermione tried very hard not to giggle when she saw his waterlogged hair, so what came out instead was a sort of snorting twitter. "It never lies flat," he complained by way of explanation.

"Yes, well," Hermione patted her own hair affectionately, "Neither does mine."

Harry thought it was rotten of them all to keep teasing him about his grooming after they had left the tower. They stopped though, when Ginny told them she'd leave Dungbombs in their beds. Ron still had to eat gingerly because of the set of tiny holes the acid pop pieces had burned in his tongue.

"I can't wait to get into Honeydukes," Ron said brightly, trying to shift the conversation. "I'm all out of chocolate."

"You're all out of chocolate the day after you buy any, Ron," Hermione shot back exasperated.

"Yeah, well, I like chocolate."

"Most people do, but they don't eat themselves sick as soon as they get their hands on some."

"I need to go to Zonkos, I'm all out of Stink Pellets."

"You're all out of Stink Pellets the day after you by them, Ginny," Harry teased, and Hermione grinned.

"Show some loyalty to your family," Ron said, open mouthed, his hand on his chest.

"George doesn't make Stink Pellets, does he?" Ginny retorted, a spark of something more than irritation coloring her words. Her brother's mouth was too full of scrambled eggs to answer.

* * *

A pretty witch in sparkling purple robes waved to Severus, and her friend sitting with her winked. He pressed his teeth together for a moment and sat down across the room, a stack of essays in his arms. Minerva didn't understand why he would spend student Hogsmeade weekends at a table in the Three Broomsticks marking papers. Diligence was all very well she said, but he had to get out of his office and talk to people sometime. When he had been a seventh year student, he had worked on his own essays at a table in the Three Broomsticks, and the pattern was set. It worked for him.

Severus did not like to change things that he knew worked, and he didn't like to admit when they had stopped working. He had never been a civil man, or a sociable one, and he had never seen the need to be either. Yet, as Potter had been so kind as to point out to him the week before, he couldn't act like Severus Snape if he didn't want people to realize he _was_ Severus Snape.

He clenched his hand and the quill he had been holding in it snapped. Muttering darkly under his breath, he picked up the sharpened piece and did his best to write with it, shortened as it was. The letters he formed with it were clumsy, but they evened out, and his intent was perfectly clear, in some cases the blots of ink making it more so.

It had never occurred to him when Potter had stripped him of the glamour that he would spend the foreseeable future actually having to be pleasant to people. He could just hear Minerva telling him that he had a second chance with people and that he should take advantage of it. It was a wonderful gift. He sipped on his butterbear resentfully.

The witch in the purple robe wove through the crowded room and pulled out a chair at his table. She smiled at him. "May I sit here?"

He bit back his retort that she had a perfectly suitable seat across the room from him already and so she shouldn't be bothering him and nodded, grimacing.

"Thank you, you looked lonely over here by yourself; I thought I'd buy you a drink."

Severus looked up from the essays, alarmed. "What?"

"A drink," she smiled again, showing off her white, even teeth, "seeing as it is the day before Valentines Day, after all."

"No thank you," he managed, successfully not snapping at her, and then, because he felt awkward, "I'm only having the one, you see."

She smoothed her hair, which was blond and curly, and her robe, which was tight. Severus fought to keep his face impassive when she giggled, "you don't mind if I order something for myself then?"

"No, of course not," he said even as she waved for another drink and he realized his input wasn't necessary.

"I see you're a teacher up at the school," she cocked her head and sipped her redcurrant rum. "What do you teach?"

"Defense against the Dark Arts," he said guardedly, barely forcing down the urge to tell her it was none of her business and could she please go away so that he could go back to marking the pitiful offerings of his third years.

"I haven't seen you around before, are you new this year? I saw in the Prophet that the headmistress had to hire four new teachers in one year, can you imagine?" She was quite nice looking, he thought, if overly talkative and too inclined to giggle.

It struck him abruptly that without the glamour he might be attractive, possibly even hansome. Much as he had disliked the man, James Potter had been so, and his son was, even if he was a bit scruffy. The butterbeer and his breakfast began to churn in his stomach.

"Yes," he stared at her, "I'm new."

"Well at least you have plenty of company."

"Excuse, me," he mumbled. "But I really should finish these," he gestured to the pile of essays.

"Oh of course," she smiled politely and wrote something down on a spare piece of parchment she had in her purse. "There's my address if you want to floo me later." She smiled at him one last time and walked away, wobbling a bit in her high heels. Severus balled up the parchment and threw it into a trash bin near his table as soon as she wasn't looking at him.

* * *

Harry and Ginny's breath floated before them in clouds and harry tucked his hands into his arms to keep them warm. She slipped her arm into his and drew close to him and sighed contentedly. "You're warm."

"Oh."

"That's the only reason I'm cuddling you."

"Really."

"Really!" she insisted, eyes wide with pretend sincerity.

"Well alright then." She snickered.

She pulled him into Zonkos, and Harry started shivering in the sudden warmth. "Do you think I can smuggle a Fanged Frisbee back with me?" she asked, fingering one. It snapped at her and she patted it. It shuddered and started panting happily.

"It might bite you if you tried to smuggle it in under your robe."

It wriggled as she kept petting it. "True. Do you think if I fed Mrs. Norris hiccough sweets she'd be easier to hear coming?"

"I thought you liked cats."

"I do like cats, but nobody likes Mrs. Norris," she picked up a bag of the sweets, "except Filch, and he doesn't count." Grabbing a giant bag of Stink Pellets, Ginny grinned. "I have plans for these."

"How many plans do you have?"

"As many as I have Stink Pellets."

"So if you bought more you'd have more plans?"

"Yeah, that's how it usually works."

"Well that's good then." Ginny snorted.

On a table in the middle of the store were heaps of yo-yos and a sign saying "screaming yo-yos, half off." She picked one up and weighed it in one hand. "This I could smuggle in." The tossed it back and forth between her hands and threaded her way though the mass of students to pay.

She dropped the Stink Pellets, the yo-yo and the hiccough sweets on the counter. A bored freckly wizard with a receding chin glanced down at the items and drawled, "Seven Sickles."

Ginny opened her coin pouch and poured out the contents. Five Sickles and a stream of Knuts spilled out onto the counter. She counted out the Knuts as quickly as she could, sorting them into piles. "Twenty seven, twenty eight, six Sickles," she proclaimed, pushing the twenty nine Knuts to one side and counting the rest. At twenty six, she ran out of coins. She swore under her breath and Harry dug three more knuts out of his pocket and pushed them over with Ginny's money. "No," Ginny insisted, pushing them back to him. "I don't want your help paying for anything."

"It's just three Knuts," Harry told her, "It's not like it's much money."

"No!" she yelled, "I'll pay for things, on my_ own_!" Her ears turned the same cherry red as Ron's did and her freckles stood out dully against her flushed face. He nodded reassuringly and took the coins. "Would you take this back for me?" she asked, handing him the bag of hiccough sweets.

He left the sweets on the table and waited outside by the door, thankful to be out of the packed store. When she came out with her bags, she smiled at him. "Sorry about that."

"It's alright," Harry said relieved, shifting his feet.

Ginny grinned and pulled her arms under her robes, bag in hand. "I always wear this shirt to Hogsmeade," she told him when she tugged the robes back onto her arms. She held her arms out for him to see, bunched the sleeves of her jumper up to her upper arms, and pulled the fabric of her robe and shirt taut around her forearms. Against one wrist he could see the bulge of the yo-yo and her other arm looked bigger with bags of stink pellets running from her elbow to her wrist. "It buttons at the wrist so things don't fall out."

Her arm snaked around his again and she rested her head against his shoulder. He let her guide him up the path to the Shrieking Shack. "I don't like the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year much," she mused, "with all of the new third years running around for the first time. We didn't have Hogsmeade weekends last year."

Harry wrapped his arm around her shoulders and rubbed one of them gently. It was the first time he had heard her talk about the school under Voldemort's reign. Most people wanted to forget it had ever happened. "I'm sorry," he said lamely.

"It's the third time though, so most of the third years know the Shrieking Shack is boring."

"Don't most people know what it was really for now?"

"Not really, the people who do know aren't telling, are we?" They sat down on a small knoll and leaned back against the fence posts.

The day grew warmer slowly as they talked. "The Shack isn't that boring," Harry murmured, "I pretended to be a ghost and threw mud at Malfoy third year."

"I know. I wanted an invisibility cloak so much after that."

"You'd be real trouble with one, wouldn't you?"

"I already am real trouble."

"Intolerable then." She laughed and lay back on the grass. Harry smiled a little reluctantly and dwelled happily for a moment on how very different Valentines Day in Hogsmeade with Ginny was from with Cho. She grabbed his arm and pulled him down into the grass with her and kissed his lips. He let her before he fell down to lie beside her. With a touch of guilt, he knew that he would have to tell her eventually about Eileen, even if he didn't tell her about Snape, because Ginny was supposed to be his girlfriend.

Though he wasn't going to tell her right then, not yet.

* * *

The apples bobbed behind Professor Prince's head as he lectured, and every so often one of them would tap him on the shoulder and he would spin around to see what was behind him, but each time, they shot high above his head, out of sight. Ginny's wand flicked surreptitiously behind her book, directing them in their flight. The class watched as one of the apples touched him again and he twitched so viciously that he knocked it again as he turned. Ginny guided it carefully under his legs and up in front of him, sending it up to rest near the ceiling. She could hear his teeth grind together from where she sat in the front row and she saw his hands spasm open and closed before she turned her attention back to the apples.

Periodically, someone in the class would break into a short fit of strangled giggles as the apples looped and whirled in the air and Ginny would try not to grin. She sent one of the apples swooshing though Professor Prince's pony tail, which swung back and forth like a pendulum. He twisted around as Ginny sent the apples skyward, but that time, when he couldn't see anything, he looked up.

He pointed his wand at the apples floating against the ceiling and sent them zooming towards Ginny. She stared at them wide eyed, preparing top duck under her book when they stopped abruptly over her desk and fell onto it with twin splats as they were transfigured into apple sauce. "Ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Weasley," he spat, "and detention." Ginny grimaced and vanished the applesauce.

As the class ended, Ginny put away her books and brushed something rubbery in her bag with the back of her hand. She smiled, reassured that it was still there. While Prince's back was to her, she cracked open the window a tiny bit and left. The open window tugged at her thoughts, demanding she use it all though her next few classes. There were no nagging feelings of guilt as she pulled out the fleshy string like object and examined it to make sure it was still intact. Hermione had asked her to keep her ears open, but she planned to do more than that. She planned to extend her reach a bit.

* * *

Two days later on Saturday afternoon, Ginny leaned against the wall in the class room directly above the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and dropped her treasure down though the window, an extendable ear. She lowered it down until it rested between the window to Prince's office and the classroom and put the other end to her ear.

Hermione had asked for her help, she reminded herself, before Harry told her whatever it was he hadn't told Ginny, before she had told her she didn't need her help anymore. Actually, Hermione had told her it was nothing, but Ginny's curiosity had already been peaked. There was a part of her that wished she could have found out the secret first, for once in her life know something that Ron and his friends didn't know. She should have something like that.

She had spent _months_ of on and off listening in on Prince's office, only to have nothing to show for it, no suspicious conversations, no discussions with co-conspirators, nothing at all, not even a hint at what she should be looking for, and the more she listened, the more frustrated she became, and the less she heard the surer she became that Prince was up to _something_.

A flash of something that might have been guilt passed though her as she heard Harry's voice, but she ignored it. Harry deserved it really, if he treated her as less than he treated Hermione, and if he didn't know that she would realize he was leaving her out.

Whatever secret Prince had, and whatever Harry and Hermione shared about it, she would find it. It was her _right_.


	20. At the Stake

Chapter Twenty: At the Stake

Friday found Harry at the Gryffindor table soaked with pumpkin juice. Bodmin had knocked over the entire pitcher onto his lap when she delivered his mail. Ron snatched the newspaper the bird carried away from her and glanced at the headline while Bodmin tore into his scrambled eggs, and then into his hand, which sat next to the plate. "Arrrrg!" Ron cried, shaking his hand before sticking the side of his thumb into his mouth. "Bloody horrible owl!" When he took his hand away from his mouth, a rivulet of blood ran down his wrist.

Hermione plucked the paper from his other hand, ignoring his discomfort. "Ooh, Harry, you have to see this," she insisted, passing him the front page.

**Malfoy Couple Get Slap on the Wrist**

**Narcissa Found Innocent, Lucius Given a Fine**

_The Malfoys, the wealthy pureblood family well known for their connections in the Ministry and more recently for their involvement in the Death Eaters, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's chosen followers, have reason to celebrate. Yesterday afternoon, their trial concluded with one verdict of innocence for Narcissa Malfoy, the sister of the infamous Bellatrix Lestrange, and conviction on the charge of belonging to a proscribed organization for Lucius, for which he was sentenced to pay a fine of one thousand Galleons._

_Evidence presented during the trial proved that both had given house space to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named during his takeover of the Ministry as well as to their fellow Death Eaters and that both had colluded with their fellows on several occasions. The pair were also suspected of Death Eater involvement at the first fall of He-Who Must-Not-Be Named, but claimed to be under the Imperious curse, and therefore not responsible for their actions. As the use Imperious curse is impossible to prove or disprove except with the administration of Veritaserum, character witnesses are used when the Ministry does not approve its use. Both Narcissa and Lucius gave their testimony under Veritaserum at their second trial._

_While both Malfoys are admitted Death Eaters and Lucius was among the Death Eaters who broke into the Ministry of Magic in June of 1996, and their son, Draco Malfoy was the Death Eater who let his fellows into Hogwarts in the attack that resulted in the death of Albus Dumbledore, The Wizengamot chose to treat the pair with leniency because of the tearful testimony of their son, and the testimony of the boy hero, Harry Potter, who testified that Narcissa Malfoy saved his life by lying to the erstwhile dark lord on his behalf._

"_I hope this trial has helped close the door on a very ugly chapter in Wizarding history," Kingsley Shacklebolt said in a statement to the press immediately following the verdict._

_Critics of the verdict however, feel that no door has been closed at all. "Lucius Malfoy should be treated as any other Death Eater," Arthur Weasley, a longtime opponent of Lucius Malfoy and high profile member of the Order of the Phoenix, the order Dumbledore created to combat the Death Eaters, stated. "Whatever his wife may have done to help Harry, she did it for her own ends, not Harry's, and Lucius certainly had nothing to do with it. They should both be sent to Azkaban." Mr. Weasley and other critics claim that the Malfoys escaped prosecution the first time and have received such a light punishment this time because of their wealth and connections inside the Ministry. Some even allege that they may have bribed several members of the Wizengamot to once again escape imprisonment. Other critics claim they needed a sacrificial lamb, and that they are heroes of the war. Whatever the truth of either of the allegations, very few in the Wizarding community will be satisfied with this verdict._

"A thousand bloody Galleons?" Harry roared, "They could pay ten times that and not even notice!"

"Did they actually use the phrase 'boy hero'?" Ron asked, disgusted, reading the article. "Wait, you testified for them?" he raged, shoving the paper down onto the table, covering the sausages. "I thought you went to testify against them!"

"I thought so to," Harry fumed, ripping the article in half and then into quarters. "But the Wizengamot wouldn't let me, they kept cutting me off!"

"At least your father wasn't misquoted," Hermione whispered to Ron, patting his uningered arm in what she hoped was a soothing manner.

"Yeah, but it made it sound like he wanted them in Azkaban because he had some kind of vendetta against them!" Ginny jumped away from the bench, shaking.

"Well it's not like we aren't used to the Prophet being slanted," Hermione said philosophically. She stood up and Harry, Ron, and Ginny followed her out of the Great Hall.

"I still can't believe they just got a lousy fine," Harry grumbled. "I agree with your dad, they should go to Azkaban and stay there."

"Hey Potter," drawled a familiar voice, and something long and blunt jabbed him between the shoulder blades. Harry turned around and backed up very quickly. "Awww, does ickle Potty want my nasty mean parents in jail?"

"Yeah, that's right, Malfoy," Harry said loudly, reaching for his own wand and pointing it at him.

"Remember, Potter, it was your testimony that got them off, no moaning about it now." For the first time in months, he gloated, smiling widely, looking unpleasantly like his old self. "Some people even think they're heroes because of you."

"Yeah, well I don't, I think they're scum sucking Death Eater murderers who should rot in Azkaban."

Malfoy's pale pointed face contorted, "Brave words, Potter." That was all the warning he gave. He jabbed his wand at Harry and yelled, "_Confing_-"

"_Expelliarmus_!" Harry cried before Malfoy could finish the blasting curse. The wand flew out of Malfoy's hand, and Harry reached to grab it, but before it could sail over to him, it landed in the hand of someone else.

"Detention, Potter," Snape hissed, passing Malfoy's wand back to him. Harry groaned silently. He could feel rather than see Hermione folding her arms behind him. Snape glanced at her. "And you Malfoy. Get to class, all of you." Harry did his best to turn his smirk into a grimace.

* * *

Bodmin arrived on Saturday morning with the date and time of his detention and a sharp nip to his wrist when he didn't get it away from her fast enough. "I think she likes you," Hermione said gravely, "You aren't bleeding."

Harry ignored her. "Ron, could you tell everyone that I'll miss Quidditch practice today?" he growled.

Ginny peered over at the slip of parchment. "Git," she exclaimed sympathetically.

So, in the afternoon, Harry dragged his feet to Snape's classroom. "The desks are already clean," he said as soon as he was inside, as politely as he could manage, which wasn't polite at all, "so what am I supposed to do this time?" He didn't notice the open window in the corner, and as Ginny Weasley thought, he deserved his conversation to be overheard if he were so careless. He knew better after Rita Skeeter.

Snape handed him a ledger and a stack of marked essays. "You will enter the scores into there, potter, legibly if it isn't too much to ask."

Harry snorted, reflecting that it was almost but not quite amusing the way the man took everything and turned it into an insult. "Are you actually out of disgusting detentions," he asked, wonderingly. "You're really down to having me enter marks?" It was only one step away from having him do lines.

Some ten minutes into the detention, Harry looked up. "Where's Malfoy?"

Snape glowered at him from behind his desk. "His head of house requested he serve his detention with him." Professor Stalk's crusade to reform the Slytherin children of Death Eaters was fast becoming legendary.

"It won't work," Harry said, bending over the essays again. "Malfoy's too much of a prat." Snape growled in warning, and Harry muttered under his breath just to spite him, "slimy little Slytherin."

It had its calculated effect. Snape leapt to his feet to loom over the still seated Harry. "I could always give you another detention for insulting my house." It was amazing, Harry thought, the way he barely moved his lips when he spoke.

"I didn't say anything that wasn't true," Harry shot back rebelliously.

Snape's head snapped back. "You saw fit to use my house name as an insulting term!"

Harry stabbed the quill against the table and glared into Snape's own glare. "Well he's definitely following in the footsteps of his house founder; purebloods are the only true wizards and all." He shouldn't have said it, shouldn't be deliberately provoking him he knew, but it was almost comforting to insult Snape and be insulted back.

"Do you honestly think that in the middle of the dark ages, anyone knew whose blood was pure and whose wasn't?" Snape hissed. "All we know about Salazar Slytherin's beliefs are that he didn't want to teach the children of Muggles! There were perfectly sound reasons he would have not wanted to accept them into the school!"

"Name one," Harry challenged, baring his teeth derisively.

Severus smiled cruelly at the response. He would fulfill that dare with relish. "Perhaps he didn't want to have his young students discovered by their family and neighbors and executed, or perhaps he didn't want one of them turning traitor and leading a mob or an army to the castle gates? Even if every last student were loyal, how could the founders be sure they would hold up under torture?"

There was something joyful in Snape when he was lecturing, when he thought he had won an argument or when he was pressing his advantage, a fierce poisonous sort of joy. Harry supposed it might be the friendliest he would ever be. "He could have just taught all the Muggleborns fire freezing charms," Harry shot back, remembering the essay he had to write in the summer before third year, "and I thought the castle was warded against Muggles."

"I doubt the wards would hold up if several thousand Muggles attacked en mass," Snape retorted, leaning over the table. "Besides, the castle wasn't even finished until almost a hundred years after the last of the founders died."

Harry pushed himself away from the table and shot to his feet. "Oh yeah, then how did Slytherin build the Chamber of Secrets if the castle wasn't complete?"

"He built it into the foundations, Potter, those were obviously completed first," Harry bristled as Snape spoke to him as if he were an incompetent.

"He shouldn't have built it at all," Harry spat, "He left a monster under the school waiting to kill Muggleborns; doesn't sound like he cared much if they were burned at the stake." He wished it didn't come out so resentfully. He had a good point.

"Each of the founders left something to protect the school. Hufflepuff left the plans for the secret passages and hiding places, Gryffindor left the wards, and Ravenclaw left the moving staircases and trick doors. They're more prone to changing if one walks over them feeling militant." Snape folded his arms. "Most scholars assumed they left their gifts after Slytherin left, but I think his protection was the Chamber." Snape smirked, a particularly unpleasant expression when he used it. "It was meant to be let loose on the school's enemies.

"Well it wasn't let loose on the school's enemies, was it?" Harry raged. "It was let loose on the school."

He shrugged eloquently, "Enemies have used the secret passages to sneak into Hogwarts. The wards don't protect against most real dangers. Perfectly innocent people have been stranded by the moving staircases."

"Yeah, well, why should a Muggleborn student be any more danger than a Pureblood? They could both be caught."

"Because wizards aren't going to turn their children over to their neighbors if they find them working magic, you fool." Harry scowled back at him, wishing he could find just one question Snape didn't have an answer for. "And Wizarding raised children were raised to be careful!"

"I still say they could have taught them all fire freezing charms their first year."

"I forget that's the garbage Binns teaches. The buffoon is convinced that hearing the truth would terrify his delicate students." Harry listened, almost mesmerized as Snape gathered momentum. "Burning at the stake was never terribly popular in Britain anyway. Hanging and drowning were the preferred method, and there are no concealed ways to hide those. Oh, and Potter, during the height of the witch hunts, Muggleborns and Halfbloods were barred from admission. The professors didn't like sending children home to die each summer."

Harry felt vaguely ill as Snape spoke. The man looked so pleased with himself, even as he talked about children dying. "Well, you said yourself it wasn't the height of the hunts. It's not like Slytherin knew what was coming."

"There were lynchings and killings of witches and wizards before the height, Potter; it just wasn't systematic until Inquisition."

Harry curled his lip. "You make Slytherin sound as if he were some kind of protector of the Muggleborn."

Snape leveled him with a frustrated scowl. "I'm just trying to make clear to you that there were perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to admit children who could be killed because he admitted them, or worse could be used to destroy the school and everyone in it!"

"Yeah, but they probably weren't Slytherin's reasons! The whole house is full of people who want to see Muggleborns and Halfboods taken out and shot! Look at Voldemort!" Harry was nearly shouting before he finished.

Snape's eyes widened and then narrowed. "I do not appreciate having my house judged solely on the ravings of a pathological murdering tyrant!"

"Yeah, well look how many of your housemates followed him."

"The Dark Lord built off beliefs that began to take hold in the eighteenth century Potter, the time in which Muggleborns began to return to Hogwarts after the witch hunts. That's when the pureblood mania began, not in the tenth century with Salazar Slytherin!"

"How do you know what he believed any better than I do?" Harry muttered petulantly. "He lived over a thousand years ago."

"The Sorting Hat sorts students according to which founder would have offered to teach them, and it sorts Halfbloods and Muggleborns quite happily into Slytherin. If Salazar Slytherin thought they were inferior and not worth his time, it wouldn't sort them that way."

"He had awful taste in students then."

"Ten points from Gryffindor." Harry forced down a hysterical giggle. "My mother was a Slytherin, Potter, I don't think you thought she was slimy, or do you just have awful taste in women then?"

Harry flushed. "Eileen is an exception, Snape, you aren't."

"The Sorting Hat almost put you in Slytherin." He twisted his mouth into a smug grimace, as if the argument pleased him but the facts didn't.

Harry's head snapped around and he bared his teeth. "Who told you that?"

"The Headmaster, fifth year," Snape eyed him contemptuously, "to convince me to teach you Occlumency."

Harry nodded. It didn't surprise him. "He knew."

Snape stared at him blankly, "About the Hat? Obviously."

Harry's hands clenched against each other. If he whispered, it would be cowardice, he convinced himself, speaking clearly, "That I'm your father. I met him in the past, coming back."

It didn't surprise Severus any more than Dumbledore's meddling had surprised Potter. The headmaster had always known much more than any reasonable person could be expected to know. It had been one of his most annoying habits to inflict choice bits of knowledge onto his subordinates whenever it struck his fancy. "I suppose he hoped we would get along," he snarled sarcastically.

"You make him sound like an idiot!" Harry exclaimed indignantly.

Severus shook his head sharply, "Merely perpetually optimistic."

Harry gritted his teeth and bent his head back to the ledger in an effort to ignore Snape. He might have made an effort to get along with Snape, just to prove him wrong and for the sake of Dumbledore's memory, if it weren't outright impossible. The quill tip crumbled against the parchment as he wrote.

When he inked in the last mark, he hesitated a moment before pushing it over to Snape, to delay any more words between them. Snape plucked it distastefully from the table and glanced over it. "I will make the effort to find you something suitably disgusting to do next time I give you detention."

Harry stared at him and wondered if the man were possibly making a very unpleasant joke. "You do that."


	21. Fat, Fire, and Frying Pans

Chapter Twenty-One: Fat, Fire, and Frying Pans

Ginny sat down clumsily on top of the unused teacher's desk at the front of the classroom, breathing heavily. She yanked back the extendable ear from the window and mashed it together in her hand. A dry sobbing gasp rattled in her throat. Her nails dug into the soft rotted wood of the desk. She wanted to run, or to scream, but the window was still open. A wave of her wand shut it with an imperious flick, but her hands shook so badly the wand fell from them and clattered to the floor, and she jumped down from the desk to retrieve it.

A tear trickled down her cheek and she swiped it away angrily as she clasped the door handle and opened the door. Her breathing came quick and loud as she hurried off through the quiet hallway to find Ron, cheerful, direct Ron, who could never keep secrets and certainly not ones like this until he met Harry and Hermione. But this time, he hadn't known either, and she would be the one to tell him.

She found him in the common room, his forehead smeared with grass, collapsed in one of the red squashy armchairs clustered around the fireplace. "Ginny! Where were you? You missed Quidditch practice!"

She barely noticed Hermione sitting next to him as she flung her arms around his neck. "I know, I was spying on Harry!" she shrieked, a few fat tears gathering in her lashes.

Ron went rigid in her embrace. "You were doing what! Why?"

Hermione broke in, horror and shock warring in her voice "You can't just do something like that!"

Ginny ignored her, "That doesn't matter," she burst out. "Oh Ron," He patted her shoulder awkwardly, sprinkling dirt onto her back, his arms tensing as if he wanted very badly to push her away.

The Fat Lady's portrait opened with a soft swish, and Harry stepped through. Ginny scowled over at him even as she sniffed back tears. "What's," Harry gazed around the room before focusing on Ginny. A few stray third years and a pimply fifth watched her cry interestedly. "What's going on?"

Ron shrugged his shoulders helplessly and the top of one shoulder shot into Ginny's chin. Hermione stared wide-eyed as Ginny disentangled herself from her brother and shot to her feet. Her mouth opened and closed several times over as her fists clenched and she breathed heavily through her nose, unable to think of what to say. "You cheated on me," she finally gasped weakly. The answer vaguely surprised her as her eyes misted up again. Of all the betrayals inherent in his secret, she accused him of cheating on her first?

Ron sputtered indignantly while Harry stared at his sister blankly. "What? No, I wouldn't… I haven't…" but he had, he remembered, feeling sick. He had slept with Eileen. He felt even sicker, because if she knew about that, then she knew about the rest too. His breath hitched, and he reassured himself ineffectually that Ginny couldn't have found out about it, because no one who knew would have told her. Snape wouldn't McGonagall wouldn't, and Harry didn't dare.

"Ginny," Hermione said reasonably, "He was in detention just now; he couldn't have been doing anything."

"I heard him talking about it!" she shouted, "Just now."

Hermione snorted, "With Professor Prince? Not likely."

Ginny could hear her almost say "Snape" instead of "Prince", and if anything the substitution made her angrier. "You can say 'Snape'," she spat, "I heard that too." Ron made a small choking noise in the back of his throat and Harry had to grasp the arm of one of the chairs to keep his hands from shaking. The three third years and fifth year moved closer, but the four didn't notice. "You went back in time and got Snape's mum up the duff!" she shrieked, "With Snape!"

A croaking sound from one of the third year girls reminded Harry suddenly of their presence. He waved at Ginny to be quiet and turned to face them. "Go away," he snarled, and as the fifth year opened his mouth, Harry growled. "None of you will mention any of this to anyone." They scattered to their dormitories, or at least to the staircases and out of sight. If Harry didn't think he would scramble their brains entirely, he would have cast a memory charm.

"It can't be true," Hermione pleaded, appealing to whatever sense of logic Ginny had. "How would he have gone back in time? Why would he?"

"I don't know," Ginny howled, "but he did!"

Ron rubbed a thumb across the top of Ginny's hand trying to soothe her and stop her lunatic raving, but she slapped his hand. Hermione turned to Harry and he gazed back shamefaced. "No," she said, and he hung his head.

"Harry," Ron mumbled, "Are you telling us that you're Snape's _dad_?" No one had ever put it quite that baldly before, not even Harry in is own mind. He and Snape had done their best to avoid it. "And I've been taking lessons from Snape for _months_?"

"How," Harry swallowed hard, "how did you find out about this?"

"I heard you, just now, in detention," Ginny hissed fiercely, holding up the smashed Extendable Ear.

"You spied on me?" Harry raged, "You _spied_ on me?" A buzzing emerged in Harry's ears, first faintly, then overwhelmingly.

"You cheated on me!"

"I didn't!" Harry shouted back. "We weren't even really dating at the time!"

As soon as he said it, he knew he'd said the wrong thing. Ginny let out a tremendous wail, as much fury as misery. "When did you go back then? Fifth year? The beginning of Sixth?" She scoffed. "You didn't have any idea what to do with a girl back then."

"During the last battle," he replied tartly, "When Voldemort cast the Killing Curse at me."

"We hadn't stopped dating, Harry, Not really." Mucus dribbled from her nose and Hermione tried to offer her a handkerchief, but she brushed it aside.

"It was nearly forty years ago! Neither of us was even born yet!"

"It was barely a year ago," she insisted, her voice muffled.

"It wasn't like I went back and said 'Well Ginny's gone, I'm going to shag the first girl I see'!" Harry shot back. "I was there for a long time."

"How long?" Ginny challenged, "It can't have been too long, you didn't look any different when you came back."

"Three months," Harry retorted, "And we only shagged once, right before I left."

"Three months?" Ginny roared. "It only took you three months to forget about me?"

"It wasn't like that!" he shouted. "I was alone and I tried to get back and I couldn't, and I didn't know anyone, and I didn't know if I'd ever get back…" He stopped speaking and shivered. "And she was nice to me." Harry didn't think he should mention making blanket nests in the middle of Eileen's kitchen; Ginny already looked at him as if she were imagining him as a blood stain on the common room carpet.

"Well you got back," didn't you?" Ginny hissed coldly. "You should have been able to wait three stupid months!"

"Ginny," Harry shouted, his hands jerking, and he didn't know if he wanted to shake her or try to comfort her. "I got back _because_ I got Eileen pregnant. I couldn't come back until Snape had been conceived!"

She tossed her head. "You could have waited a little longer."

"You don't know what it was like," Harry told her, voice shaking. "I never left the house. She was terrified of what her neighbors would think if they knew she had a strange man living with her-"

"And they would have been right, wouldn't they?" Ginny interrupted snidely, folding her arms across her chest and glowering at him.

"And months passed and _nothing happened_." Harry sucked in a breath, trying to calm himself down, but it didn't work at all. "Nothing changed! I was no closer to coming home, and I was starting to think I wouldn't, and I'd just have to hide out until it was 1998 again. I didn't think I was ever going to get to see you again anyway."

"You still should have told me," she howled, "instead of letting me make a fool of myself!" Harry tried to remember Ginny making a fool of herself and couldn't. He decided it probably didn't matter.

"You shouldn't have spied on me!" He retorted, the curtain rods and windowpanes shaking. "Why should I trust you with anything if you spy on everything I say with Extendable Ears?" From out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hermione flinch.

"I wouldn't have to if you'd just tell me things! I'm not a little girl, Harry; I don't have to be protected from the truth!" She slammed a fist down onto the back of one of the chairs, where it sunk into the padding with an unsatisfying rustle. "And you," Ginny cried, rounding on Hermione. "You're no better!"

"Me?" Hermione responded startled, her voice shrill. "I only knew that Prince was Snape, I didn't know any of the rest of it!"

"That's bad enough!" Ginny shrieked back, balling her hands into fists and storming out though the portrait.

"Where are you going?" Ron called uncertainly.

She turned her head back. "The Quidditch pitch," she snapped, and slammed the painting back in place. Ron rose to his feet and started to follow. He stumbled and turned back to Hermione apologetically, and Harry noticed he didn't meet his eyes.

"Go," Hermione told him, and he nodded and pushed the Fat Lady's portrait open.

* * *

Ron found Ginny when she was already up in the air doing loops around the poles of the Quaffle hoops. He grumbled up at her and mounted his own broom to follow her, thinking irrelevantly that she wasn't dressed to be flying. She halted in mid air and blew into her hands before grabbing the handle of her broom again and shooting upwards and to the other end of the pitch from her brother. Her hands slipped on the broom handle with the moisture of her breath.

Ron accelerated and turned, chasing after her, and as he came level with her, she dove to skim the grass with the tips of her toes. Plummeting after Her, Ron called her name, and she shook her head, streaking just above the ground to the other end of the pitch. Ron sighed heavily and flew after her, and when she tried to rise, he was right above her. "You could've always flown earlier, at Quidditch practice," he said to her, trying to sound nonchalant.

"He was keeping something from me," she twisted away from him, but he followed, just above her.

"Yeah, he's allowed to do that sometimes," he replied dryly, his throat hurting.

Ginny pulled her knees up trying to gain more speed and get away from her brother. Each time she tried, he checked her and she ground her teeth together. "Not with something like that! You heard him; did he get to keep that from me? From either of us?"

Ron shifted uneasily on his broomstick. "Well no," he acknowledged, "but you shouldn't be spying on him for anything anyway!"

She whirled around in the air to face him. "Oh yeah, you can talk, I'm sure you never spied on anybody while you and Harry and Hermione were off having your adventures!"

Startled, Ron shook his head. "That was different! If we didn't know things and if we didn't find the Horcruxes, people would die! We would die. You spied on him because you wanted to stick your nose in his business, and he wasn't telling you." His eyes widened as he spoke, wondering if she had really missed that or if she was just ignoring it. "And I _never_ spied on Hermione! You're just not supposed to do that to friends."

"Well Hermione didn't think so; she's the one who asked me to spy on Snape in the first place!" The broom bucked under her as she sought to push past him and he pushed her back. She landed with a thump on the grass. "And then she found out who he was and told me that there was nothing wrong and I should stop watching him, and nothing else when it was obvious he wasn't who he said he was. What was I supposed to do?"

"You could have talked to me," he said, landing beside her. "You could have talked to _Harry_."

"Even you said Harry and Hermione were acting weird," Ginny blew onto her hands again and their breath rose out in front of them, "and Harry would have just put me off."

"Probably," her brother responded grudgingly, "which should have told you to drop it, shouldn't it?"

"No!" She thundered. "It would have told me he was hiding something!"

"He gets to do that, Ginny! Everyone does! You do, you hide things from him."

"This was Snape! He killed Dumbledore; he cut off George's ear. This was _important_. It was something he should have told us all about!"

"He was on our side; Dumbledore was dying anyway, and they both knew it. It was _planned_. Dumbledore planned it. And he wasn't trying for George, he was trying for a Death Eater and missed."

"You weren't here last year. He was awful. He just let the Carrows and the Death Eater kids do whatever they wanted to us, and cast the Cruciatus Curse, and beat us…"

"No, you're right I wasn't there, but none of you died, did you? Not even you and you were my little sister, and _Harry Potter's girlfriend_, and everyone knew it, and you made it though with Snape as the headmaster." Ron might have hated the evil git, but he was very glad his sister was safe.

"Because a lot of us went into hiding!"

"He could have told Voldemort he thought you were helping us and had you killed as soon as you came to Hogwarts!" He picked at a blade of grass near his foot. "Besides, that wasn't why you were spying anyway, so it doesn't matter."

Ginny grumbled and muttered too low for Ron to hear her, but she didn't make a reply, and instead sat with him, shivering as the afternoon wore on. At last, she smiled at him unhappily. "I should have known you were going to take his side," Ginny tried tentatively.

"Yeah, well, don't think you're the only one who's getting yelled at."

"Yeah, I know."

"You were here to fly, right?" he asked, trying to sound cheerful.

"Yeah," she responded, thrown by the sudden change in conversation.

"Then let's fly." He took off one of his gloves and charmed it to fall slowly like a Quaffle and tossed it to her. She caught it with a grin and flew headlong to the hoops. Kicking off the ground after her, he rushed to block as she threw the "Quaffle" to one of the hoops. He caught it and held it out to her with a satisfied smirk. She plucked it from his fingers, glaring at him wryly. They played until the sun sank below the horizon and Ginny couldn't see his glove as it fell. Her lips were blue and her freckles stood out against her icy cheeks as she hung her broom up. He threw an arm around her shoulders and trudged with her back up to the castle.

* * *

Hermione tapped her foot into the plush carpet. "So that's why Snape looks like you," she said slowly. "He was under a glamour and now it's off?"

Harry nodded. "McGonagall thought there wasn't any point in casting a new glamour when no one knew his real face anyway."

Hermione sat across from him quietly for a moment, piecing together the implications. "He was planning on being here this year incognito after the Daily Prophet article?"

"He and McGonagall kept getting death threats, and McGonagall wanted to cast a glamour, so he dragged me up there to tell her why she couldn't."

"It must be hard for him to look like your father, and you of course," she remarked pensively. "What glamour did you use?"

He hadn't thought about it quite that way except in brief moments of spite when he had hoped it galled Snape until he choked on it. He flushed shamefaced and replied softly, "_Occulto verum_."

"So now that you've cancelled it, he can never go back to his old appearance."

There was something intrinsically soothing in Hermione's predictable pursuit of information and logic over condemnation. He hadn't told her before, but once she knew, all was forgiven, because she had something new to think about and turn over in her head. "I suppose not."

"You are the father of Snape, who is himself old enough to be _your_ father-"

"Don't even say such a thing!"

"Who is old enough to be your father instead, and has long despised you for your father, and certainly I'm sure doesn't like you any better for your biological relationship to himself."

"I doubt it, yeah," Harry wondered if she were trying to make a point or simply thinking aloud.

"Well," she said definitively, "I suppose I can understand why you wouldn't want to tell anyone."

"It wasn't just that," Harry murmured, "he asked for me not to tell anyone."

"Asked?" she raised her eyebrows.

"Well, demanded, actually," Harry laughed nervously.

"I didn't think you were easily intimidated, Harry," she smiled.

Harry sighed with relief. "Not usually."

Hermione rested her hands on the arms of the chair and nodded sharply, and to her at least the matter was settled. There was one last think she wanted to know however. She leaned forward in an almost predatory manner. "Exactly how did you go back?"

As he opened his mouth, he realized he hadn't talked to anyone about what had happened, not Snape, to whom he had shown his memories, not McGonagall, who had endured his forced confession, and certainly no one else. He took a breath, shaking, and told her about landing on Eileen's couch, about rushing to Hogwarts to find the spot where he had travelled back from, about being trapped and going back to Spinner's End, and about being unable to leave for months, never seeing anyone else, about being afraid he would never come back and that he'd somehow mess everything up while he was there. She listened patiently and nodded for him to continue whenever he paused, until at last, his speech flowed easily, and he began to tell her things he hadn't even wanted to acknowledge he had been thinking about.

"I left her, you know," he mumbled darkly. "No, I didn't just leave her, I left her to Tobias Snape, and I knew how he was going to treat her and Snape. I saw it in Snape's memories."

Hermione ran a hand over her hair. "You had to come back, Harry, history had to be the way it was." He hunched in on himself and she narrowed her eyes at him. "It wasn't as if you could stay and marry her. You would have caused a paradox."

Somehow the reasons why it had been necessary to leave weren't any more appealing and helpful when Hermione said them as when he had told them to himself. "I might have stayed if she hadn't thrown me out."

She shook her head, her mouth twisting wryly. "No, I don't think you could have stopped yourself from coming home." She reached over and laid a hand on his shoulder. "It would have driven you mad."

Harry thought it might still be driving him mad. "I could have stayed at least for a little while," he whispered, "A few days, a week, enough to say goodbye at least."

She shook her head. "It wasn't your choice, she didn't want to say goodbye."

Sometimes, sensible, clinical Hermione couldn't untangle his dilemmas any better than he could, but at least she didn't make them worse. He smiled halfheartedly. "I guess Ginny should be jealous. I wanted to stay."

* * *

When Ginny came back to the tower, her brother on her heels, she didn't even look at Harry as she sped up the stairs into the girls' dormitory, almost tripping over a stray third year as she climbed. Hermione met Harry's eyes and told him gravely, "She'll come around, Harry, she just needs some time to cool off. It isn't as if you arranged to go back in time on purpose to meet someone."

"I'm not sure I care if she gets over it," he replied sullenly. "She _spied_ on me. She listened in on I don't even know how many conversations of mine!" Hermione, who knew only too well the desperate curiosity which had driven Ginny, said nothing.

Ron flopped down into the chair next to Harry, eyeing Hermione warily. "You shouldn't have kept that from her," he began without preamble.

"She shouldn't have been spying on me, should she?"

"No, but what was she supposed to do when you weren't telling her anything?"

"She shouldn't have pried in the first place!" He sent Hermione a dark look and she shorted. "Don't I get to have any secrets?"

"Of course you get to keep secrets, but you might have told us that we were being taught by Snape!"

"THAT WASN'T EVEN MY SECRET!" Harry shouted. "I only knew because Snape and McGonagall couldn't avoid me knowing!"

"Yeah," Ron shot back, matching him for volume, "but you still knew it, didn't you, you could have told us anyway! We certainly found out enough things we weren't supposed to know before this! We've even spied on people before!"

Harry stood up to look down on Ron, but Ron stood up too, and he still towered over Harry. "Yeah, but that was different!" Harry felt an eerie sort of déjà vu, and thought that at least Hermione hadn't yelled.

"How?" Ron shot back. "Do you think when we were eleven we really realized we were fighting Voldemort? To us it was just an adventure!"

"It wasn't going to help anyone to know!" Harry refrained from pointing out that they weren't eleven anymore, but only barely.

"It wasn't going to hurt anyone either!"

"It might if someone had spread it around school, or if someone had _overheard_!" Hermione winced and Harry tried to suppress the slight satisfaction it gave him. "There were death threats!"

"Well, it wasn't like we were the ones making them!"

"So?"

"We can be trusted to keep quiet about it, can't we? We always have before!"

"That doesn't mean I could tell you! How do you think Snape would have felt if I ran to you and told you his secrets?"

"Who cares?"

Harry wondered the same thing for a moment. So Snape didn't want anyone to know. Why did that matter to him? But it mattered. He wasn't sure why, but it mattered that he not tell other people's secrets when he didn't have to. He glowered up into Ron's face, and Ron stared furiously back at him. They held each other's gazes for a full minute before Harry dropped his eyes and stomped up the staircase into the boys' dormitory, unconsciously taking the same path Ginny had taken.

Out of Harry's earshot, Ron turned to Hermione. "I promised Ginny I'd yell at him too."

Hermione observed, "They're both being a bit petulant, aren't they?" but Ron wasn't so sure.


	22. Dark Side of the Moon

Chapter Twenty-Two: Dark Side of the Moon

Whispers ran thick through Hogwarts and dogged Harry's heels. By Monday morning, all of Hogwarts knew that Professor Prince was Professor Snape and that somehow Harry was his father. The details were a little fuzzy, Dean had asked if Harry had really gone back in time on a giant Golden Snitch, but everyone could be found telling the story mostly coherently by the time Harry had to go to class.

A thick cloud of dread followed him around as he shuffled his way from Transfiguration to Potions, and he waited for Snape to swoop down on him, drag him off, and demand an explanation. Even the Professors watched him strangely. Professor Switch sent him looks of disbelieving pity as he struggled to turn his ballet slipper into a music box, and hadn't even marked him down because he couldn't get the ballerina to twirl with the music. In desperation, he had nudged her with his wand, and he could have sworn that he had heard her huff at him and fidget.

Harry looked up to see Belby glowering at him apprehensively. Startled, Harry wondered if his professor were worried that Snape's cruelty and sarcasm would manifest itself in Harry because Harry had somehow managed to produce him. Harry turned his own sour look to his dried bat guano and ground it more assiduously as his temper frayed. If he managed to get his hands on the nosy gossiping gits who had spread his secret around school, they wouldn't make it to the Easter holidays in one piece.

At last, he couldn't pretend his guano was anything other than a fine powder. He stirred the eel's blood into his cauldron, watching Hermione carefully and hating the fact that he couldn't just follow what she was doing, because he was supposed to be _inventing_. He didn't feel very inventive at all. Nott's cauldron smoked ominously, and Harry wondered glumly when his would follow suit.

In the end, the murky multicolored concoctions the class bottled for the professor didn't resemble limb regenerating tonic very well at all, and Harry wished they would soon be over the potion invention part of the term soon. He handed his own in with relief, that it hadn't blown up, and trepidation. Belby's advice didn't make any sense. Even Hermione squinted at him as he spoke.

He almost wished Snape would hurry up, because then it would at least be over with. At least if Snape yelled at him, he could yell back, and he might stop feeling sick to his stomach every time he left his dormitory.

* * *

Severus gnashed his teeth as a pair of Ravenclaw second years panicked as his gaze passed over them as they ate. The entire student body seemed to be staring at him and then at Potter and then at him again. The food on his plate congealed as he pushed around his stewed carrots and mashed potatoes. His fork bounced off the gravy.

Filius eyed him oddly. "It's nice to know you weren't scared off by the flocks of owls, Severus," he squeaked. "I always thought you were made of sterner stuff."

Severus quietly calculated whether or not it was worth trying to be polite since everyone knew who he was. "Obviously I was 'scared' enough to go into hiding," he snarled, stabbing a carrot with his fork and trying to shake it off again.

He swept the hand Filius had rested comfortingly on his arm away as the tiny professor answered. "But you did stay!"

He glanced back at him irritably. "In whatever altered state, yes." He gave up on the carrot lodged on his fork and let it clatter to his plate.

"Not so altered," Filius beamed, but then thankfully turned to speak to Pomona, and Severus stopped listening. He turned his attention to Potter, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes to glower at the boy, who periodically looked up from his food and scowled back at him. He sat in semi exile at the end of the Gryffindor table closest to the door, a few awed first years clustered around him. As time wore on, Potter returned his determined stare more and more frequently, until he too simply glared at him without eating. Slowly, the students who finished their own meals didn't leave but instead stayed to watch the two lock eyes and snarl. When at last Severus couldn't stand to sit there sneering at the boy, he rose and pushed away his plate. He strode purposefully between the tables to the door, his black teaching robes billowing behind him, and stopped behind Potter's seat. "Detention," he hissed into the boy's ear.

The boy sputtered, accidentally knocking his goblet of pumpkin juice over. A thin rivulet trickled onto his lap, soaking into his school robe. "What for?" he demanded.

Severus stood mute for a moment, searching his mind for a suitable offence that he could use as a pretext. "Befouling the castle," he retorted as the juice dripped to the floor. The boy had the ill grace to look triumphant.

* * *

Before Harry had even crossed the threshold into Snape's office, the man started snarling. "You gave us both away, Potter."

Harry let the door swing shut behind him with a bang. "No more than you did."

"The whole school knows, Potter, obviously someone told them! What, did you get tired of keeping the secret, did you think it would be amusing to let everyone know? Did your friends get a good laugh out of it?"

"No."

"Really, Potter? I suppose you think this hurts me more than it hurts you and so it's worth it." Severus remembered the victorious expression on the boy's face when he assigned the detention and his knuckles turned white as the blood fled them and his fists clenched.

Harry didn't mention the third years and fifth years he had only vaguely recognized who had overheard his quarrel. "I didn't ask my girlfriend to shout it all over the common room, did I?" He crossed his arms across his chest defiantly and he could hear Snape's teeth grind together from where he stood.

"But you told her Potter, did you think she wouldn't start shouting?"

"I DIDN'T TELL HER!" he roared, and glass in the windows rattled. He noticed the open window and stomped across the room to it and locked it, shoving the latch into place hard enough to almost snap it off. "She was spying on us! I didn't even know she knew until she started screaming at me!"

"Spying," Snape repeated incredulously, "spying."

"Dangling extendable ears from the window above!" Harry pointed to the formerly slightly ajar window. "This isn't my fault," he said resentfully.

Why exactly was she spying on you?" Snape's expression changed into a strangely accusatory smile. "Were you acting suspicious? Are you an idiot who can't keep a secret for more than a few months at a time?"

"It was your office she was spying on," Harry pointed out with his own cold smile. Actually, managing to keep a secret for more than a few days at a time was an impressive feat in Hogwarts, but he doubted Snape would agree if he said so.

"Yes, but it was you she was spying on!" Harry could see the vein in Snape's forehead jumping away from his skull with every syllable.

"No it wasn't!" Harry shouted back. "Hermione told her there was something not right about you before she figured out who you were! Ginny just didn't back off when Hermione told her too."

Snape sneered at him. "Did you expect her to? I knew you were an imbecile, but surely not even you-"

"_I didn't know Hermione told her_," Harry insisted. "I didn't know about any of this. It isn't my fault," he repeated, "it isn't." He hunched his shoulders sulkily and glared at Snape from under his eyebrows. They watched each other for a moment, eyes level, Harry leaning against the wall with the windows. At last, Snape cleared his throat, but Harry cut him off. "You should check the windows in your classroom too," he mumbled, rushing out past Snape and yanking the door open.

Severus snatched for his arm, but when it slipped through his hand, he decided to let it go. He had no wish to spend time with the boy anyway.

* * *

Ginny wouldn't talk to Harry, which was alright, because he wouldn't talk to her either. As the week dragged on and Hermione hissed into his ears that he should at least apologize to Ginny for his part every time his ears were close enough for her to do so, and Ron flitted back and forth between Harry and Ginny, hinting as subtly as he knew how about talking again, Harry wasn't sure he wanted to talk to them either.

During Quidditch practice, Harry and Ginny avoided each other's eyes, and if Ginny had to refer to him, she called him the Captain. Harry didn't refer to her at all. Ron muttered as they showered that the two should work out something for Quidditch's sake if not for anything else, but Harry steadfastly pretended he hadn't said anything. Harry had been ignoring a lot of what Ron said.

"I'm not going to apologize to Ginny!" Harry shouted in the middle of the packed common room when Hermione told him he should be the bigger person. "Until she apologizes to me!" Silence greeted his pronouncement as his housemates turned their eyes to him and stared. Harry flopped chagrinned back into his seat as he looked around at the gazes of all of his fellows. "I won't."

"Oh Harry," Hermione began exasperated, "you're acting like a little boy!"

"She spied on me!" he shot back more quietly. "I'm _not_ the one who needs to apologize."

"Yeah, well you shagged another girl," Ron said bluntly, his voice barely above a whisper, "an ugly girl."

Harry flushed. "She wasn't ugly. Ron snorted, and Harry felt compelled to defend his erstwhile lover. "She was pretty when she was smiling." He remembered Snape's memories and continued, "And when she was young."

Ron leveled him with a frank stare, amused and revolted at the wistful expression on his friend's face. "That's the thing, Harry; you don't feel sorry about it at all."

"If you don't apologize to her, you're never going to get back together," Hermione chimed in briskly.

Harry bristled, "Yeah, well, I don't want to get back together with her."

"Harry," Hermione pleaded, attempting to sound sensible, "you really are being very childish."

His color deepened again. "_I'm_ the one being childish?" he demanded furiously.

"Yes, well," Hermione began matter-of-factly, "it isn't mutually exclusive after all. You and Ginny are both acting childish."

Harry brushed her off. "And you, Ron, you think I'm acting childishly too?" Ron nodded slowly with a sidelong glance at Hermione.

"If I'm being so _childish_," he stood up and crammed his parchment back into his bag. "You can go talk to Ginny instead. I'm sure you think she's acting her age."

"Harry," Ron called hesitantly.

"Go on, talk to your sister then." He stomped off, his eyes straight ahead.

* * *

Almost as soon as Harry had let the portrait slam shut behind him, he contemplated opening it again and rushing back inside. He had whispered the first syllable of the password to the fat lady, who muttered darkly at him for letting her picture slam, before he turned around and decided to walk away. He didn't know what to say anyway.

He ran his hand along the wall as he meandered his way though the castle corridors, not sure where he was going. As he came to a gap in the wall, his fingers passed over something that wasn't stone and wasn't air. He stopped. Luna vaguely batted his hand way from her face and examined his fingers. Her eyes fixed on a scrape across the tops of his knuckles, "You have finndersnicks."

"What?"

"They live in ink bottles and crawl out while you're writing to eat the skin off your hands." Her enormous eyes turned to his face with a look of immense pity.

"Oh."

"Spring begins in nineteen days," she said dreamily, "You must be happy."

"Er…"

"It's when the grimble gums come out of their nests," She said definitively. "Their mating calls repel finndersnicks."

"Do, er, grumble gims always come out on the first day of spring?"

"Grimble gums," she reminded him mistily. "Yes, they can tell."

"Luna," he asked quietly, "Have you ever heard a grimble gum?"

"No," she said smiling. "Their voices are too high for us to hear.

Harry nodded. "So, Luna, how, er, how have you been?"

"I've been well," she said, flattening a piece of air on his head. He stood still, afraid he'd startle her if he moved. "It's been quiet. None of my friends have come to talk to me."

Guilt pooled in the bottom of his stomach and he remembered the picture in her house of Dumbedore's army and the caption beneath it. "Oh, I'm sorry."

"It's alright," she told him wide eyed. "I knew there were other things going on."

The way she said it, as if she were just stating an observation and not condemning him or reassuring him made him feel even worse. "I should have come to talk to you."

"If you wanted to." She picked at a piece of invisible lint on her sleeve.

"I wanted to," he lied, his face hot. "I just…" But she ignored his denials with an absent smile. "I should have come to talk to you," he repeated lamely.

"I knew you were busy with Professor Snape," she murmured. Harry mused that he would rather have spent time with Luna, who was at least nice. "It's a bit unusual to find out you have a child older than you are."

"You knew about that?" Harry asked startled.

"Of course," she replied, and Harry wondered if she really had, or if she had retroactively decided she must have known, because it was simply the sort of impossible thing she always knew. "I've been trying to figure out what I should call him," she began after a long pause. "He isn't really a Snape, is he?"

"I suppose not," said Harry uncertainly. He hadn't really thought about it, except to remind Snape that technically speaking, he was as much a Potter as Harry.

"And Prince isn't his real name."

"Not really," Harry shifted his feet awkwardly and the sound of them rustling against the stone seemed embarrassingly loud in the silent hallway. "But, er, it was his mum's."

"I don't think he would like it much if I called him Professor Potter."

"Definitely not," he said, stopping himself from backing up quickly.

"I'll probably have to call him 'Severus'." He would have liked to watch her call him that in class. Shivering, he thought about calling Snape that himself at some point.

"Er, it might be best just to call him 'Sir'."

She twirled one of the quills stuck into her rather lumpy braid, her eyes on the ceiling. "Yes, but I want something to call him in my head when I think about him."

"Don't," Harry advised succinctly. He couldn't imagine anyone wanting to think about Snape. He did his best to avoid it.

She nodded, pale eyes wide and unfocused. "What do you call him?"

When he opened his mouth, he almost told her he called him a git. "Professor Snape," he said at last, a small part of him feeling a bit ashamed and the rest of him ignoring it.

"You should call him by his name," she told him, and he grimaced. "People like to hear their names."

Harry thought Luna had very strange ideas about what Snape would have liked to hear, but he kept the thought to himself, "maybe."

"You are fighting with Ginny Weasley," she said, her eyes focusing on his face, and he flinched back. She cocked her head.

"You shouldn't be," she said frankly, "you both like each other."

It took a moment for Harry to stop himself from telling her that he didn't like Ginny very much at all right then. "Yeah, but she _spied_ on me, and then shouted things she wasn't supposed to know about anyway to the whole school!" Even if she had only shouted about it in front of her brother, Hermione, and a few stray Gryffindors, she had let the whole school know.

"Yes," she breathed, "but secrets aren't ever really secret for long."

Luna wasn't the most objective person to talk about privacy with, he supposed. She didn't think much of people who tried to keep knowledge hidden. Harry folded his arms. "That doesn't mean she had to make it not a secret," he returned resentfully. Luna nodded, and Harry continued. "I mean, if she just acknowledged that she did something wrong, it would be better, but she just thinks that what she did is alright."

Luna nodded again and Harry wondered if she ever fought with anyone about anything. Slights and cruelty slid off her so easily. "We all like to think that we did the right thing," she said dreamily and traced a vein in the rock wall with her nail. "Sometimes people want it so much they make themselves think it."

Harry blushed badly, but Luna seemed not to notice and kept gazing at him intently. "And everyone's trying to get me to apologize to _her_, and I _should_, but if I do, she'll just think I'm saying that she's right, I'm wrong." He leaned against the wall, hands behind his head, his elbows spread out to the sides. "She'll think it's over, and think everything's alright again." Or worse, Harry thought, she'd tell him his apology wasn't good enough. It wasn't going to make her apologize to him as well.

"If it's the right think to do," Luna started, tapping the stone wall with her fist. Harry wondered what sort of strange magical creature she was looking for and if she was going to tell him. She pressed her ear flat against the wall for a moment before she continued, and when she did, she spoke as if she hadn't just paused in the middle of speaking to examine the masonry. "You should do it no matter how she reacts." Harry decided that this was what got Luna into trouble.

She tapped another stone and listened patiently, and slowly moved her way down the wall until she had her ear to the baseboard. Harry found he couldn't think of a reply because he was too busy watching her. "Thanks, Luna," he said at last, stepping away from the wall.

"Hush," she told him as severely as Luna ever managed. "I think there are pandycats in the rocks." Harry thought about the Basilisk and grimaced.


	23. Ink Bottles

Chapter Twenty-Three: Ink Bottles

Ginny's lip pushed itself out into a pout as she glowered at her professor. Her wand twitched in her hand, but she didn't feel like playing a prank. Pranks were for when things were funny. They were for safe people, people who weren't evil, just annoying. They weren't for Snape.

She crumpled her notes into a ball and smoothed them out again, the ink smearing across the heavy parchment. Ron, Harry, and Hermione didn't know; they had no idea what it had been like at Hogwarts while they were off fighting Voldemort. They didn't know how fearsome and cruel Snape could really be when he had all the power and they had none, when there wasn't a Dumbledore or McGonagall to stand in his way. It was the only reason she could think of that anyone could be so blasé about his presence in the school, still there to spread venom and misery. Oh, he might have been fighting against Voldemort, but he wasn't on _their_ side, not really. He was evil, true insidious evil, and he didn't have to side with anyone but himself.

Her stomach sloshed as she scuttled across the room to borrow a bottle of ink from Luna Lovegood. Snape's eyes followed her and she flushed with a sick sort of rage, the sort that gathered in her belly and left her with no idea what to do about it. "Miss Weasley," he barked when she was nearly to Luna's desk at the corner closest to the door, "return to your seat."

She snapped around to face him and fought the wicked smile that threatened to spread across her face, "but I was just going to borrow an ink bottle, Professor Potter."

Snape reared back as if preparing to strike her from across the room. "A month's worth of detention, I think," he spat. "See me after class." Ginny felt as if one weight had been taken off her chest and a new one left in its place.

When the rest of the students streamed out of the door, Ginny marched up to the desk, gritting her teeth. "I only called you by your real name," she told him defiantly, her head tossed back, hands folded across her chest, the same wicked smile she had stopped earlier returning to pull at her lips.

"You will return to using my legal surname, Miss Weasley, immediately."

"Fine," she snapped, "but that isn't the real reason you're giving me a month of detention, is it?"

She whirled around to walk out the door, but he stopped her up short. "There is very little chance anymore that you will become my step mother," he stated with something that might have been bitterness, but it was so close to his normal tone of voice that she wasn't sure.

"It's not like this is my fault," she roared, fully aware that he was baiting her and not caring. "He should have told me what was going on! This is the sort of thing I'm supposed to know!" She thrust out her jaw and glowered at him, bight orange eyebrows coming together in the center. "I wouldn't have had to spy if one of them had just _told_ me-"

"The very moment you learned what you wanted to know you shouted precisely who I was for the whole school to hear," his lip curled and her nails dug into his desk, "and you wonder why Potter and his cohorts never tell you anything."

Ginny backed up a step, furious. She turned on her heel and stomped away from him. As her hand reached for the doorknob, he growled, "You will not leave until I tell you to." Her hand dropped to her side and she turned back to him, eyes narrowed. "Next time you open your mouth," he enunciated, "you should think carefully about who the target of your anger really is."

"Now can I leave?" she hissed, stepping backward quickly to leave whatever he said.

"Get out."

* * *

Harry chose a seat on the other side of the room from Ron and Hermione, rolling his shoulders into a sulk.

Snape somehow managed to raise an eyebrow and still glare at the other two as they sat down in the almost abandoned front row. Hermione laid out her parchment, quills, and ink bottle neatly in front of her and wondered how long the students would keep clear of Snape. It had been weeks since everyone had found out, yet even the Slytherins continued to treat him as if he were an unusually touchy Blast-Ended Skrewt instead of the particularly unpleasant professor whom they all had known for years.

Just as class was supposed to begin, Snape stalked in, black teaching robes flapping around him. The first time Hermione had seen him wear his old robes without the glamour, she had done a double take. It didn't matter that she had known for longer than almost anyone else that the man wearing them was Snape; it was still disconcerting to see a face so much like Harry's over those robes. She once had wondered morbidly whether he wore those robes so that he didn't have to change if Voldemort called his Death Eaters.

She glanced over at Ron sucking on his quill with the sort of smile that told her it was a sugar quill and that he wouldn't be taking any notes at all. With a nudge to his arm, she snatched his quill away and replaced it with her own. He gasped indignantly at her, open-mouthed and she smiled back disarmingly. She had completed the move so smoothly, swooping in with her quill and swooping away with Ron's, that she didn't even notice until too late where she put her elbow. Her ink bottle tumbled off the table and shattered on the floor, the ink soaking into the wood grain.

At the sound of breaking glass, Snape spun around from inspecting the notes the chalk wrote on the board and leveled her with a nasty stare. "Detention, Miss Granger, for one week."

Harry opened his mouth to come to her defense, but Hermione beat him to it. "Oh honestly," she sniped, "all it needs is a vanishing charm!"

"One month then. You will not talk back to me."

She sucked bad-temperedly on the sugar quill, and if Ron complained that it was gross when she gave it back, if she gave it back at all, she'd just tell him that kissing had negated that point.

Hermione hung back as the other students crowded through the door. "I don't believe I asked you to stay after, Miss. Granger," he snarled, remaining behind his desk.

"No sir,' she said.

"Then why haven't you followed your lack-witted fellows?" He waved one hand towards the door as if to sweep her away.

"I wanted to talk to you."

"That," he sneered, "was obvious."

She swallowed, lifted her chin, and strode over to his desk, hands clasped loosely in front of her. "I don't think that accidentally knocking an ink bottle off a desk very good grounds to assign a week's detention, Professor Snape, and pointing this out to you is even worse grounds for assigning an extra three weeks."

"Befouling the castle and disrespect to a teacher isn't enough grounds?" His eyebrow lowered and his fingers twitched, but she didn't back down. "Perhaps for an evening's detention, a week for the disrespect if you stretch."

"If you expect me to rescind your punishment, you're wasting your time," he hissed, dropping his quill.

"I didn't expect you to," Hermione cocked her head. "I just don't think that my clumsiness is the real reason you assigned the detention."

Her expression was so abominably serious and yet smug that Severus pushed himself away from the desk and lurched to his feet. "What precisely are you implying?" he queried deliberately.

"Only that you have alternative transgressions in mind when assigning the detention, professor."

"Enticing another student to spy on me is grounds for expulsion, Miss Granger," he thundered at her. "You're lucky you only have a month's detention!"

She supposed there was really no point in denying it. "If you could prove that I had in fact-"

"I have witnesses!"

"Neither of which you could actually convince to accuse me."

Of all of the Gryffindors, of all of Potter's specific companions, Granger was the one with whom he would least often associate the word "cocky" but that was changing rapidly. "Did you have a purpose to this conversation?"

She nodded. "I only wished to ascertain that your motives were what I thought they were."

"Are you satisfied," he raged, "in your relentless quest to pry into everyone else's private affairs?"

"For now."

"You had absolutely no right to do what you did!"

Hermione dropped her hands and the swung free to her sides. "Harry was acting so strange, and you were, and nothing added up! I was afraid," and she had been, afraid, and frustrated, and hurt that Harry had a secret that she didn't.

"The war is over, Granger," he snapped. "You can no longer get away with what you had to get away with before to fight the Dark Lord."

Hermione fell back, startled, but only for a moment. "I've already had this conversation," she told him primly, "with Harry." As she turned and strolled out the door, he snarled.

* * *

The letter with the dates and times of Hermione's detentions arrive the next morning with the rest of the post. It landed directly in the middle of Ginny's plate of sausages, and when she fished it out, it was dripping grease. "Snape gave you detention too?" she asked, surprised as she passed Hermione the note. "What for?" After six days, she had yet to tell them what her detentions were for, so Hermione didn't say anything.

Hermione glanced over at Harry, slouching amidst a group of awestruck first years. He looked up and met her eyes.

"Rotten of him to give you a month's detention for a stupid ink bottle," Ron remarked, stuffing two slices of toast with bacon and scrambled eggs crammed between them into his mouth. Hermione looked at the ceiling and Ginny answered for her. "He wasn't really giving her detention for that," Ginny told him peevishly. "He was giving it to her because she told me something was up with him.'

Ron thought about it. "Yeah, but it was still a lousy excuse." Hermione wholeheartedly agreed.

Harry padded his way across the Great Hall up to where the seventh years customarily sat. "Ron?" he said apprehensively, "Hermione?" They looked away from their plates to face him, and he swallowed. "I just wanted to say I was sorry for… earlier."

"For being an enormous prat?" Ron suggested helpfully.

Harry looked at him. "Yeah, that."

"Well sit down then," Hermione ordered, pointing to the empty space beside her. No one had wanted to sit where Harry usually sat for some reason. Ginny exhaled sharply and shot to her feet. As she stomped off to sit with the first years, Harry supposed he could wait and apologize to her later then.

* * *

Ron scuffed the carpet with the toe of his shoe. "So we have no head girl for a month."

Harry sighed. It was disconcerting for everything to be suddenly normal between the three of them, pretending the last week and a half hadn't mattered. "She's still head girl."

"Yeah, but she's cleaning the loos with Filch, and she didn't leave you a patrol schedule, did she?"

Harry shrugged. There was a dangerous gleam in Ron's eyes, and Harry figured he knew what Ron was suggesting. "No, I'm supposed to write it." Ron nodded. "I suppose you want the kitchens." Ron nodded harder. "They call that letting the fox guard the henhouse, Ron."

"Yeah, well, what are you guarding, then?"

"The humpbacked witch."

"Who's the fox now?"

"Remember," Harry wagged his finger, "you're actually supposed to report anyone you see sneaking around."

"Yeah, I know."

"Bring me back something with chocolate," Harry told him, pulling out a sheet of parchment and scribbling down schedules. He had a feeling that if Hermione found out what he was doing, she'd be back to writing schedules, and Ron would be back to guarding the hallways, detention or no.

Hermione peered over his shoulder as she hurried out of the common room. "It's a good thing you're finally taking over some of your responsibility as head boy, Harry," she said with a smirk.

* * *

Ginny stood in Snape's doorway, glowering from behind her bangs. He glanced up from marking essays and snapped "in," at her. As she marched stiffly to his desk, she tripped over a door stop and caught herself, ruining her effort at temperamental dignity. Hermione was so lucky, she thought, to have her detentions with Filch instead. She'd give almost anything not to have to spend hours every night with Snape.

The cheep Muggle desk he'd had the night before had vanished and in its place stood a stately carved oak one. Ginny supposed it had been back-ordered. Suddenly she wanted to use what was left of her Fireworks to blow it up, but she decided she'd settle for dropping a stink pellet into one of the drawers during her next detention. "Your detention for this evening is to clean that." He pointed at a birdcage resting on the top of his bookcase full of doxies.

She stepped over to it and examined it. "Why exactly do you have a cage full of doxies?" she grumbled as one of the little monsters tried to bite her through the bars of the cage.

"The second years are learning about household pests," he retorted, not looking up from the essays.

"They're more than pests," shot back Ginny. "They're dangerous creatures."

"In this year alone, you have managed to blow up my desk, spy on me, tell my secrets to the school, bounce apples off of my head, hex my chalk, and induce my quill to sing idiotic torch songs." He leaned menacingly over his desk, but even standing, she was barely shorter than he was. "Dangerous creatures are the least I can do."

Ginny thought back on the stories Hermione had told her about detention in the Forbidden Forest with Voldemort and Malfoy. "You better have the antidote in here."

Snape smiled coldly. "Afraid you can't handle something nearly all of my second years managed?"

"Do I get to use magic?" she asked huffily.

"You may use freezing charms," he told her complacently, "and only freezing charms."

She blew her breath out from behind her teeth as she whipped her wand out and pointed it at the cage. A tap sent the few doxies sleeping on the bottom buzzing to the bars snapping at the end of her wand. With her back safely turned to Snape, she smiled and flicked the latch of the cage door. It swung open and the doxies teemed out. A few chased after her wand, and she pointed at one and muttered "_Obrigesco_." It dropped to the ground and she picked it up gingerly to drop it in a waiting box.

"What do you think you're doing, you little cretin!" Snape yelled as the doxies sped towards him, mouths open, ready to bite. He pulled out his wand, and for a moment, she thought he was about to curse her, but he just shouted the same freezing charm she had used at a doxy poised to bite his nose.

One of them tangled itself in his hair, but Ginny froze it. He untangled it with a grimace and tossed the petrified thing at her. She caught it, her face twisting into a sneer, and dropped it into the box beside its fellow.

Freezing charms flew thickly through the room as the pair tried to round up the buzzing gaggle of irate doxies before they zoomed back to attack them again. "You imbecile, you didn't even learn the one thing Lockhart was competent to teach!"

She smiled impishly at him. The doxies hadn't rushed to attack her, so she considered the enterprise a success. "And that is?"

Snape didn't reply as three more doxies fell to the floor. Ginny gathered the fallen and dropped them into the box. At last, the office fell silent and Ginny asked "How many of them were there?"

Snape glared balefully at her. "Ten."

Ginny poked her wand into the box to count the doxies. "One, two, hay, what's this?" The box into which she had chosen to drop the creatures was half full of notebooks and loose pieces of paper and parchment. The large rounded writing on the loose pages didn't look at all like Snape's cramped spiky script. She pulled it out to examine it closer.

"Put that back, Miss Weasley." Snape came to stand behind her and she flinched without meaning to.

"It's someone else's research," she accused.

Severus paused a moment to reflect that she thought he was doing exactly what Belby was. "It isn't any of your concern," he snarled. "I'm certainly not about to steal someone's recipe for-" he plucked the sheet from her fingers, "an ear hair vanishing elixir."

"Then what are you doing with it?" She did her best to look down at him even if he was just a bit taller.

He scowled at her. "I borrowed them from a colleague before you were born, Weasely, I found them when I changed offices." She didn't believe a word of it, and his jaw clenched as she pursed her lips. A terrible suspicion flooded him. "You will not rummage through my notes further," he demanded tartly. "Haven't you had your fill of sneaking around?" She gave him a last defiant glance, but dropped the paper back into the box, suitably chagrined. "How many doxies?"

She counted them quickly, "nine. _Accio _doxy!" It sped forward, beating its wings against the spell. "_Obrigesco_," she said halfheartedly, and it fell to the ground where she picked it up and threw it in with the rest.

Snape conjured a bucket of soapy water and a rag and buried his head in a new stack of essays as she stripped the doxy droppings and a few flecks of paint off the cage. When the cage was clean and the water was a pale beige, Snape stepped over to her and cast a drying charm on it. "You got my floor wet."

He sounded so sulky that Ginny almost laughed as she set the cage on top of his bookcase and pushed the doxies into it. With the last one safely shut away, she jabbed her wand at the cage. "_Finite Incantatem_," she mumbled, and the doxies waved their tiny fists at her.

* * *

Just after midnight, Harry stumbled into the common room, his arms full of chocolate cream puffs. Ron, a cake and a plate of éclairs balanced haphazardly in his hands, yawned hugely. "I hate patrol nights." Harry raised his eyebrows and pointed at the cake. "Yeah, I know, and I'm going to have to stay up even longer to finish this."

Harry snickered and Ron sauntered up the stairs. "Did you even patrol at all, or did you spend the whole time in the kitchen?" Ron just grinned and waved at him. Harry turned his head away and grinned to himself as he meandered over to the fireplace and flopped down into an armchair.

He looked up as he heard a rustling from the chair beside him, and he saw a figure seated in it against the arm rest, her back to him. "Ginny!" She flinched, but ignored him.

"Are you going to talk to me?" he asked softly. She shook her head. "I hope you don't mind if I talk," he said uncertainly.

She pressed herself against the back of the chair and folded her knees up against her chest.

"I'msorryIdidn'ttellyouSnapewasSnape," he garbled, and she turned to face him. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you Snape was Snape," he tried again. "And I'm sorry I shagged Eileen."

Ginny crossed her arms and rolled her shoulders inwards, her head down.

"Ginny?"

"Go away," she whispered. Harry heaved a sigh of relief. She didn't sound like she was crying or about to start screaming at him again. She just sounded tired.

"I _am_ sorry."

"Go away."

He left, but he left a couple of cream puffs on the table in front of her too. It was a while before she uncurled and reached for one.


	24. Fiction and NonFiction

Chapter Twenty-Four: Fiction and Non-Fiction

A sinking feeling overwhelmed Harry as he watched Bodmin glide towards him, a letter tied to her leg and an owl with the newspaper closely behind. Yet when she swooped down to the table and he opened the letter, it was friendly enough.

_Harry,_

_I know the Easter Holidays are coming, and I wanted to invite you to spend them with us. I'm holding Teddy's first birthday two weeks early so that you can come._

_Yours,_

_Andromeda Tonks_

He dashed off a reply and passed the note to Ron and Hermione with a smile, but it was with some trepidation that he unfolded the newspaper. When he saw the front page, his fork clattered to his plate as he dropped it and balled his hand into a fist. For all that McGonagall had tried to contain the knowledge of Snape's identity, threatening everything up to expulsion to any student divulging it to outsiders, Luna had been right. Nothing that was supposed to be secret stayed secret for long. Worse, when the story did break in the _Daily Prophet_, it had Rita Skeeter's name under the headline.

**Notorious Killer of Albus Dumbledore Teaching Again**

_Severus Snape, the Death Eater who murdered the famed headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has been teaching in secret at the very magical institution where he committed his heinous crime, report several students. He has taken on the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, although few would be able to think of a less appropriate candidate for that particular post._

_Even more shocking is that he has been passed off for the past several months as a distant cousin of Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived and hero of both wars against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Students tell us this was to explain a powerful family resemblance._

_According to sources within the school, just before the end of the war, Harry Potter sojourned to early 1959 where he had a relationship with the then unmarried Eileen Prince, soon to be Snape. Severus Snape, who was the product of the union, was passed off as the son of an unwitting Muggle, whom Prince then tricked into marrying her._

_Although the time travel was allegedly accidental, several experts and people close to Potter have expressed their doubts as to the possibility of it truly being unintentional._

"_I don't believe for a moment it was accidental" One of Harry Potter's fellow students told our correspondent in confidence, "this I the sort of thing Potter always does." Stories about the Boy-Who-Lived's high-handedness and recklessness have been circulating throughout the Wizarding world for years._

"_You don't just accidentally travel to a different time. It takes a lot of specialized preparation," a contact within the Department of Mysteries said._

_The greater fear among many in the Wizarding World is that Potter will use his influence to protect his wayward son. Accusations that he has already done so to avoid the consequences of Death Eater activities have sprung up already. "It would certainly explain why he isn't in Azkaban for Dumbledore's murder at least," one concerned parent told our correspondent._

"_Nepotism always seems to be what brings down the great heroes," one student told our reporter sagely. "I don't mind him sewing his wild oats, but he shouldn't prevent his sprog from reaping the consequences of his actions._

_Neither Severus Snape nor Harry Potter could be reached for an interview at this time._

Malfoy smirked at him from the Slytherin table, making a great show out of shaking out the newspaper that he had hastily borrowed from Pansy Parkinson. Harry gritted his teeth.

"I can't believe it," Hermione muttered. "Not a single named source, what were they thinking?"

"Who cares?" Ron grunted, peering over her shoulder, "It's true, isn't it?"

"Yes, but it's still shoddy publishing," she responded "besides, don't you want to know who snitched?"

"I think I know," Harry said sourly as Malfoy swaggered between the tables, a deeply annoying sneer plastered onto his face. "Well well, Potter, trickery, corruption, an _affair_, I didn't know you had it in you." Harry imagined that the piece of bacon he stabbed his fork into was Malfoy's face, and he broke it in half for good measure.

"You already knew about it, snarled Ron, his wand pointed at Malfoy's chest from next to Harry.

Harry shot to his feet. "I didn't know you had it in you to try to get yourself expelled."

Malfoy's smirk widened. 'Whatever are you talking about?"

"You spoke to Rita skeeter, you slimy little-" Ron trailed off.

Harry pointed to the comment about nepotism. "You mixed your metaphors, Malfoy."

"No, Potter, I just extended it." As he gloated, he slipped his wand into his hand.

"You're one to talk about nepotism, seeing as it's the only way you're ever going to get anywhere."

Malfoy's back was to McGonagall as she marched determinedly across the great hall from the head table, but Harry saw her. Malfoy's face flushed to a soft pink and then paled, even his lips turning white with fury. His wand arced forward, "_Pulvereus Cruento_!"

"_Protego_!" Harry shouted as Malfoy cast his curse, not waiting to see what it was.

"Mr. Malfoy!" McGonagall exclaimed, running the last few steps over to them. "Fifty points from Slytherin, Detention. "You're lucky I'm not expelling you, for the dark curse alone."

"But Potter-"

McGonagall cut him off. "Cast a shield charm. I didn't see any offensive magic, did you?" Malfoy clenched his fist and swallowed, at last shaking his head. McGonagall dragged him back to the Slytherin table by the back of his robe.

"I'm amazed you even knew what the word meant, Potter," Malfoy called over his shoulder jeeringly.

Harry sat back down, ignoring him, but he didn't have any appetite left. "They must be running out of places to put everyone who has solitary detention," Hermione remarked. Harry contemplated the idea of Malfoy in detention with Snape, and for once Snape's ire turned against someone from his own house, but then he remembered that Malfoy couldn't have detention with Snape because Ginny did instead.

* * *

Harry spent his Saturday revising for his N.E.W.T.s, which Hermione kindly reminded him, were only a few months away. He flipped listlessly through his scribbled Transfiguration notes trying to figure out what he had actually meant when he had written them, when an owl tapped on the window. He dropped his notes and shuffled over to it, and it dropped a letter into his hand. He slipped a finger under the flap and tore it open.

_Mr. Potter,_

_I am astonished and ashamed that you would use your influence to help a murderer walk free and __teach children__. Boil your head in bog water, if you have any decency at all._

The letter was unsigned. Harry tossed it into the fireplace and set fire to it without a comment. Perhaps he should have handed it to Ginny. She might have agreed.

A few minutes after Harry had sat back down to his notes, not one but four owls clamored at the window, and Harry let them into the common room. The first three he consigned to the fireplace as soon as he saw the unfamiliar handwriting on the outside of the envelopes, but the fourth was a Howler.

Hermione looked at it from over her book. "Would you mind opening that outside Harry?" she said loud enough for the whole room to hear. "I'd like to prepare for my exams without listening to a letter screaming at you." A soft chuckle spread throughout the common room, and Harry smiled halfheartedly as he pushed the portrait open.

_Mr. Potter_, a very prim voice began.

_I SUPPOSE YOU THINK YOUR SOJOURNS INTO THE PAST ARE NOBODY'S BUSINESS, AND THAT YOU CAN CAUSE AS MUCH TROUBLE AS YOU WANT BECAUSE YOU'RE THE SAVIOR OF THE WIZARDING WORLD. HOW DARE YOU! YOU COULD HAVE DESTROYED EVERYONE WITH YOUR MEDDLING, AND THEN YOU COME BACK AND HAVE THE GALL TO PROTECT YOUR SON, THE PRODUCT OF YOUR-_ The letter cleared its throat- _ADVENTURES WITH TIME, FROM HIS RIGHTFUL PUNISHMENT. YOU ARE WALKING DOWN A ROAD I DO _NOT_ LIKE. YOU HAD BETTER MAKE AMENDS QUICKLY!_

As the letter burst into flames and scattered ashes onto the carpet, Harry flushed. After all of the lies and half truths the Prophet had spouted, even just the ones about Harry, couldn't the Wizarding World realize that nothing the paper said could be trusted? He kicked the ashes in disgust and whispered the password to the Fat Lady, who glowered down at him, fingers in her ears.

Throughout the day, more owls streamed through the windows to deliver letters, Howlers, and a few highly illegal curses. Harry wondered what a Howler would do if he threw it into the fireplace unopened, but he didn't want to blow up the common room fireplace. "What happens if you don't open a Howler?" he asked Ron.

"They explode, and then they scream even louder."

"Oh, that's alright then."

He dropped his three most recent out the tower window where they fluttered in the light breeze, steaming and smoking. "You'll set fire to the lawn!" Hermione fussed, but when the letters exploded, they did so in midair. As they began to scream all at once, Harry shut the window on their incomprehensible cries.

"That sounded like your egg back in fourth year," Ron observed.

"Yeah, I wonder what would happen if I opened them underwater."

* * *

Scorch marks covered Severus' floor and new desk and the smell of burned paper and melted glue hung in the air. He missed his windowless dungeon office with its heavy rock walls, where the owls couldn't get to him, and even if they could, no one else could hear the Howlers. The Howlers smoked and sputtered, waiting until they could explode and spew their particular viciousness into the air around him. A pile of more mundane letters tore themselves to shreads at a flick of his wand. He swept one of the floating pieces of owl down out of his face. Over the noise of the shrieking insults and death threats, he heard a determined knock on his office door. Muttering obscenities, about traitorous students and students who didn't know when not to disturb their professors, he pushed the door open. Potter stood outside, his hand raised to continue knocking.

For a moment, Harry didn't know what to say. He thought about asking how Snape was coping with the barrage of letters, but he thought that would only convince Snape to shout at him again.

"Say what you came to or go away, Potter!"

"I…"

"Yes?"

"I just wanted to say…"

"What?" he demanded.

Harry glowered at him and wanted to ask if he would stop interrupting and let him finish. "I just wanted to tell you that if you open them all at once, you don't have to hear what they're saying," he yelled.

The door closed with a resounding bang.

* * *

When Andromeda's owl swooped down on Harry at breakfast the next morning, the letter it carried almost found itself in the fireplace with the rest of the mail he had received that morning. At the last minute though, Harry recognized the handwriting and snatched it back. The note was short, just a few lines.

_Harry,_

_I'll pick you up at Platform 9 3/4 then._

_Yours,_

_Andromeda Tonks_

_P.S. We have excellent owl wards._

That was the best news, Harry thought, that he had heard in days.

Hermione peered over his shoulder. "At least you'll have some peace and quiet while you're there," except for what mayhem Teddy caused.

"It feels like fourth year, when Witch Weekly said you were feeding me love potions."

"Next to that, this article looks like well balanced journalism," Hermione told him wryly. "They actually managed to get most of the facts right; it's just the insinuations…"

"Yeah, well the insinuations are complete-" Harry snapped quickly.

Hermione heaved an exasperated sigh. "I _know_, Harry."

"The last time the Prophet tried to discredit me, everyone found out they were wrong," Harry burst out, only barely not shouting with frustration. "Why didn't anything change?"

Hermione looked at him oddly. "Something did, Harry, this time the Prophet's doing this on its own. The Ministry isn't behind it."

"Well it's not enough, is it!"

"To keep the Daily Prophet from printing rubbish? Apparently not."

Harry sighed.

"We could always tell the authorities about our favorite beetle, but someone else is likely waiting to take her place."

"We could always threaten her again."

Hermione snorted. "Yes, I'm sure that would endear you to her."

Harry scowled at his plate. "I don't care about endearing myself to her; I just want her to shut up."

"You could always send her a statement. They would publish it, probably on the front page."

Harry's jaw set into a stubborn line. "I wouldn't give the Prophet anything."

"Then give it to Luna."

Harry grunted. "Not there either."

* * *

"I don't understand why you even think Muggles are worth studying." Draco drawled.

Blenheim Stalk recognized a deliberate provocation when he heard one and so answered blandly, "What do you mean, Mr. Malfoy?"

"Well it's like studying flobberworms isn't it. There isn't much they can do and a lot more that they can't."

"There are a lot of things we can't do either," he responded reasonably.

"But it's not the _same_!" Draco burst out. "They're like lumps!"

Professor Stalk smiled. "What do witches and wizards do when they can't solve something with magic?"

"Well then it can't be done," Draco said, furrowing his brow, trying to figure out what the man was on about. "We ignore it."

"Whereas Muggles, who have no magic, don't ignore it."

Draco stared at him blankly. "So they just keep at it?" Muggles were obviously more brainless than he thought.

The professor's smile widened, "Exactly. They just keep at it, until they find a way to do it. They have figured out how to do things wizards and witches don't even dream about trying."

He folded his arms across his chest, incredulous. "Like what?

"They can make people who are insane sane again. They can speak to anyone anywhere in the world instantaneously without having to crouch in the fireplace. They can make themselves seen and heard to millions of people all over the planet at once, like a radio with pictures. Actually, they invented the radio and we stole it. They can look at someone's bones and brain without cutting them open. They can see billions and billions of miles into space to see planets that don't orbit the sun, or see tiny the tiny microscopic organisms that make people sick.

Draco swept it aside, unimpressed, "So they can make interesting toys for themselves."

"We learned germ theory from them, and it has saved countless lives." Looking away, Draco decided his head of house was deluded. Muggles couldn't have come up with anything of any real worth. "Muggles are constantly coming up with new things, new ideas, and new ways of doing things while the Wizarding World does its best not to change at all."

"We don't need to change. The way we do things is _fine_."

"The way Muggles do things is fine too, but they don't settle for fine. Tell me, Mr. Malfoy, where in the Wizarding World has any innovation been welcomed since the fall of Grindelwald?"

"Potions…"

Stalk looked down sadly. "Yes, there are a few new potions every year, minor things all of them. Did you know that a disproportionately high number of potions inventors are Muggleborn or half-bloods?" Draco shook his head. "Muggles come up with a thousand new chemicals and combinations of chemicals every day. We have a handful a year. When was the last time wizards and witches made their own spells?"

"It's too dangerous, experimenting that way kills people! The Ministry's right to put a stop to it."

"It kills people in the Muggle world too, but they still do it. All of the spells we have were once dangerous experiments too. There are a few mavericks who invent new spells."

"And die in their experiments."

Stalk nodded. "Some, yes, but not all. Of course, they don't dare tell anyone about their successful spells afterwards." A wistful look spread over his round features. "We wizards have let that part of ourselves atrophy. Innovation, creativity, we're all happy to see it die."

Draco glowered balefully at Professor Stalk, who just waved pleasantly towards the bookcase. "I've let my book collection get out of order, and I'd like you to put it right."

Draco looked at the books, and though he didn't know or want to know anything about Muggles, he could tell that the books were in perfectly good alphabetical order by author. He gave the professor a poisonous look, but the man kept smiling at him benignly. "How exactly do you want me to put them in order?"

"Oh, by topic, of course." Draco wanted very badly to throw the books at Stalk's heavily padded abdomen and put them on the shelf in the order they landed.

"How am I supposed to put them in order by topic; I don't know anything about these books!"

Professor Stalk looked out at him from under his drooping eyebrows. "You're going to be here for several weeks. It might be best if you tried actually reading the books."

He had to restrain himself from asking the obvious question, "You want me to read books about _Muggles_?" but then found he didn't know what to say. "Even if I were in detention with you until the end of the year, I wouldn't be able to read all of these," he sniffed, waving a hand at them imperiously.

"I thought you could perhaps take them with you and read them in your spare time."

"And read _them_ in my _dormitory_?" he shrieked. Stalk just nodded, and Draco's mouth gaped. There had to be some sort of logic that would appeal to the professor. "I have N.E.W.T.s in a few months. I don't _have_ any spare time."

The cheerful smile disappeared as Stalk grimaced and then favored his charge with a long look. "I remember seventh year quite well from my own time here, Mr. Malfoy, I believe you can find the time."

Draco's lip jutted out in what might have been a pout and might have been a sneer. "What about those?" he hissed, pointing at the bookcase against the opposite wall.

"I think I'll sort the fiction books myself. You wouldn't know where to start."

"Fiction? What is fiction?" he sneered, suspiciously.

"Fiction is stories, Mr. Malfoy, that aren't true."

"Like lies?" he demanded. "Muggles publish _lies_?"

"More like tales, like the ones we tell for children. Actually, many Muggles see a higher truth in those than in plain facts." Draco decided that along with being magically challenged and therefore not worth one book, much less two bookcases full, Muggles were all as dotty as that Lovegood girl.

"So you have a collection of Muggle children's books," he said slowly.

"Not at all. Most of them were written for adults."

Draco stared at him bemusedly. "Are you telling me that Muggles write silly little stories for themselves? Are they all _children_?" Maybe that's what the moralizers in the Ministry and teaching staff meant when they said wizards shouldn't harm them. It wasn't right to harm children.

"Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Malfoy; most of the books on that book case are each one long story, and very few of them are very childlike at all. Muggles consider such writing to be an art form, like a fine painting or symphony."

Draco scoffed. "So this is what they do to make up for the fact that they don't have magic? They tell stories?"

Blenheim Stalk thought it probably wasn't the best time to tell his student about fantasy. "A few wizards and witches have written novels, those are the long stories, and then published them in the Muggle world."

"Oh." His jaw clicked shut. "But why?"

"Muggles use them to say things that can't or shouldn't be said any other way, and some wizards and witches want to say the same things. Really, Mr. Malfoy, if you're that interested, you can borrow one."

Draco's face twisted. "No thank you."

"It _is_ your choice," Stalk reassured him with an indulgent smile. "You may as well take one of the books you're supposed to be organizing then."

"Is it?" he asked sulkily and picked one of the books off the shelf at random. He flipped it over and read the cover. _Under the Death's Head: Hitler's SS_ it said, only the esses looked like a pair of lightening bolts.

"It might be best if you left that book for another time," Stalk began, moving from behind the desk to snatch it back.

Something in Draco snapped, and he backed up, pulling the book out of the professor's reach. "No," he snarled. "You drag me in here and try to convince me that some filthy Muggle is as good as I am, and make me read about them when I don't deserve any of it. At least I can read the book I choose."

Professor Stalk's expression turned cold. "No, you don't deserve any of it. You deserve to be expelled, possibly to go to Azkaban, but you have a second chance, and the people who are giving it to you are the very people you scorn, the Muggle lovers and the blood-traitors, the victors in the war against your Dark Lord."

Draco reached down and rubbed his left arm self-consciously. "And this time?" he cried. "I didn't do anything this time that was worth a month's detention."

"You slandered a professor and a fellow student in the press."

"I didn't say anything that wasn't true," he insisted fiercely.

"You accused a rival of perjury and illegal time travel, and a professor of getting away with murder. You endangered a student and a professor for a childish grudge and violated their privacy unspeakably. That deserves expulsion, so you are on your third chance."

Draco gaped in indignation. "The school can't expel me for telling the Wizarding world the truth. The parents, my parents, had a right to know."

"You told a great deal more than the truth." He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "The sheer selfishness and shortsightedness of your actions didn't surprise me, but I had heard that you were supposed to like Professor Snape. Did his true allegiances or his blood impurity change your mind?"

Draco could only stand there and huff irately, out of things to say.

"Yes, perhaps you should take that book after all, Mr. Malfoy." Professor Stalk's eyebrows rose as he pursed his lips. "It would do you good to learn that Muggles have Dark Lords too."


	25. Feeding the Beast

Chapter Twenty-Five: Feeding the Beast

Wednesday morning brought with it Harry's response to the Daily Prophet's story in both the Prophet and the Quibbler.

**Chosen One Releases Statement**

**Potter Acknowledges Paternity, Reiterates Son's Innocence**

_In a statement released yesterday, hero of the Wizarding World and defeater of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Harry Potter confirmed that he did in fact travel backwards in time to 1959 and that he sired Severus Snape while he was there, but he asserts that the time travel was accidental. "I traveled back when Voldemort's killing curse hit me during the Battle of Hogwarts," he wrote our reporters. "I have no idea how it happened, and I wouldn't recommend trying it."_

_Potter's version of events of course contradicts the statements of every expert in the field of time travel and accidental magic that we spoke to. This was further compounded when he wrote "I tried to travel back to this time by going back to [the place from which I traveled to the past], but it didn't work until [Snape's mother] was pregnant."_

"_Going back to the original place of travel shouldn't have worked at all, and having gotten a woman up the duff wouldn't have changed that," an expert in the field told reporters._

"_Time Travel doesn't work that way," a top researcher in the Department of Mysteries explained. "It requires certain rituals, or a device charmed and used in such rituals."_

_Potter's allegations that his infamous son is innocent fly in the face of witness testimony and his own previous statements. "He followed Dumbledore's orders until the end of the war," his statement said. The Wizarding World will doubtless be skeptical of claims that Snape was acting according to the wishes of a man he had killed, and many would like to see some evidence besides the word of the suspected Death Eater's own father._

Harry shoved the paper back down. "I told you it wouldn't do any good," he muttered, passing it to Hermione, but she only smiled and passed him the glossy issue of the Quibbler she had been reading. He had expected to have to wait a few days for the Quibbler at least, since it was nominally a weekly paper and Luna had mentioned that her father was really excited about a story that the Wizarding Wireless Network was trying to implant milgering lamarts into its listeners, but Harry had the feeling that Xenophilius Lovegood wasn't very concerned about publishing dates.

**Potter Confirms Accidental Time Travel, Fathering Snape**

**Accuses Media of Slander and Twisting Facts**

_Harry Potter, hero of the war against Voldemort, released a statement yesterday afternoon in which he confirmed reports that he had traveled backwards in time accidentally, and while in the past had relations with Severus Snape's mother and conceived the notorious spy with her. However, he denied that either the time travel or the conception were deliberate. "I traveled back when Voldemort's killing curse hit me during the Battle of Hogwarts. I have no idea how it happened, and I wouldn't recommend trying it," he stated to the press._

_Potter recounted how his friendship with Snape's mother turned romantic. "I didn't leave the house at all because I didn't want to change history. Eileen [Prince, Snape's mother] didn't leave it much either because she didn't exactly like spending time with people. I guess we both just got lonely."_

"_As soon as she and I realized she was pregnant, I knew who the child had to be, so I knew then why I had to go back in time. I didn't really believe I was going to get home until I was face down in the Forbidden Forest again."_

_Potter acknowledged that unplanned time travel has never happened before, but reminded the Wizarding World that surviving the killing curse not once but twice had never happened before either. "I'm used to finding out things that shouldn't be possible really are," he told reporters. Actually, the odds against surviving the killing curse are so astronomically large that the idea of one accidentally sending a person back in time begins to seam quite plausible in comparison._

_As to the allegations that the Daily Prophet in collusion with a few Hogwarts students who wish to remain anonymous, that he used his influence to save his son from the consequences, Potter denies those as well. "His own actions saved him. I just passed the truth along."_

_When confronted with the question, why would the Prophet make the insinuations that it did if there were no facts behind them, Potter replied "The Prophet has never cared about the truth. They have made up interviews with me, claimed I was crazy, claimed my best friend was my girlfriend and that she was feeding me love potions, claimed I was a delusional liar, and now they claim I'm keeping a Death Eater out of Azkaban." Potter's statements recall recent history when the paper helped conceal Voldemort's return and sought to discredit Dumbledore and Potter at the behest of the Ministry of Magic._

_Despite the Prophet's pattern of slander, Potter said that he doesn't see any particular malice in this instance. "They just want a scandal to sell more papers, and making one this way is easier than finding the real story."_

_To read Harry Potter's statement in its entirety, see page 5._

Hermione pointed to the bottom of the article, where it said in very small letters, "Vera Dulcis, special correspondent" and smiled at Harry and Ron. "Do you like my new nom-de-plume?"

Harry nodded slowly. "So you're a special correspondent now?" She grinned, and Harry thought he could very easily imagine her teeth being very sharp.

Ron peered over their shoulders. "Harry didn't release a statement; you shoved a quill into his hand."

"Well it worked, didn't it? I got him to send it in, didn't I?"

"And it didn't help anything," he said, "look at what the Prophet did with it."

Hermione looked like she wanted to start bouncing but had too much dignity. "That's the best part, though; no one believes a word the Prophet says about you. Everyone reads the Quibbler." Harry remembered fifth year and Hermione's scorn a hearing that Luna's father published the paper, and snorted.

* * *

Severus slammed the paper onto his table, narrowly missing his plate of eggs and bacon. The table shook, and a drop of pumpkin juice landed on the forehead of his photograph. It was eighteen years old, the one they had taken when he had been arrested and held until Albus could vouch for him. "Have a care, Severus!" Filius cried, righting his goblet as milk seeped onto his lap, but Severus ignored him.

Down at the foot of the Gryffindor table, the Weasley girl watched him out of narrowed eyes, a flicker of what might have been fear set deep in the back of them. He forced a very small, very cruel smile. As he watched her flush with fury, the smile became slightly less forced. Her hands clenched on top of the table, and she smoothed out the front of her copy of the Prophet with her forearm. She lifted her glass of pumpkin juice primly and sipped it, turning to him, her glower deepening. His eyes held hers, and she stared back determinedly.

His own eyes narrowed, and he stared resolutely back into her eyes, but his eyes dried. When he blinked and opened his eyes again, she was smiling at him smugly. He bared his teeth, and she bit her bottom lip and grinned, but her stare lost none of its intensity. At last, he looked aside, and his eyes widened with indignation as he heard Filius giggle behind his hand.

Severus turned to scowl at him. "Do you find something amusing, Filius?"

Filius giggled harder. "No, Severus."

He turned back to the students and hunted for Potter amongst the Gryffindors, and snarled to himself as he saw the boy talking complacently to his friends.

* * *

In retrospect, Harry supposed he should have timed his statement better, because Wednesday also brought Defense Against the Dark Arts. He trudged despondently behind Ron and Hermione as they headed for class. "Hurry up, Harry," Ron urged. "It won't be that bad."

"Yes it will."

"He can't do anything to you for this," Hermione encouraged him. "You just have to make sure you don't give him a pretext to punish you." Harry wasn't reassured. He always seemed to be able to give Snape perfect excuses to punish him.

When they sat down, Snape fixed him with a venomous sneer and Harry winced, but Snape couldn't do much more than glare before he had t begin class. Harry resolved to not so much as open his mouth unless he absolutely had to.

Malfoy wandered in nearly ten minutes late, his nose buried in a book, interrupting Snape's lecture on how to render different sorts of dark objects harmless. Harry wasn't really listening, but he started when Snape's eyes flicked to his tardy pupil. "Put that book down, Mr. Malfoy," he snapped, and Malfoy's head jerked up. "And another detention for tardiness." Malfoy didn't put his book away, though. He sent a challenging glare Snape's way and went back to reading. "Maybe I'm wrong," Snape snarled sarcastically. "I'm sure that book could teach you better to defend against the Dark than I ever could."

Harry tried to catch a glimpse of the book, but Malfoy had already slipped it into his bag, his cheeks pink with humiliation.

Snape's dark look shifted back and fourth between Malfoy and Harry throughout the lesson, and many of the students' glances flicked between Snape and Harry. Harry kept his head bent over his notes and tried to look studious, his eyes occasionally flicking up to the board.

"Potter!" Harry started and made himself look as collected as he could. "How do you disable an object enchanted with the _Malius Oro _hex?"

Harry wracked his brain for the answer, the essay he had written the night before swimming to the top of his mind. "Don't you cast a freezing charm on it and then a defanging charm?"

"Are you asking me, or telling me, Potter?" Snape hissed.

Harry lifted his head confidently. "I'm telling you, _Sir_." Snape sniffed dissatisfied and continued his lecture. Harry supposed he must have gotten it right, because if he hadn't Snape would have taken points.

Just before the end of class while the chalk scuttled across the board writing their assignment, Snape peered down at him. "Potter, Stay after class." Ron swore softly beside him, and Harry agreed. As his fellow students streamed out, Harry stumbled up to Snape's desk. Snape sent Anthony Goldstein scurrying out of the classroom with a look, and Harry found himself hoping that Ron and Hermione were waiting outside the door for him.

Before Snape could begin, Harry glance towards the window Ginny had used and saw Snape do the same, but the window was firmly latched.

With sharp jerky movements, Snape pulled a newspaper out of a drawer in his desk and shook it out. Harry's mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite a grimace as the professor brandished it in his face. "Explain. This. To. Me." Harry could hear the slight pauses between each word, making them each distinct, like a separate spell Snape wanted to fire at him, and he badly wanted to flinch under the onslaught.

"I thought even you knew what a newspaper was, Snape."

It was quite remarkable really, how quickly Snape's eyes could narrow into slits at the smallest provocation. "You know what I'm referring to, Potter."

Harry glanced at the haggard, frightened, wreck of a man on the paper's front page and winced. He wished they could have picked a newer photograph than the seventeen year old one from Azkaban. They had them, after all. "It's an article about a statement I gave the press about us." He kept his voice steady and glared resolutely up at his son.

"And why did you make such a statement?" he demanded, and Harry had the disconcerting thought that Snape almost acted like he was _Harry's_ father, a horribly unpleasant father who only took notice of him when his actions interfered with Snape and there was punishment to be dealt, but Snape certainly didn't act like he was Harry's _son_.

"Why do you think?" Harry snapped back. "I wanted to get the real story out for once."

Snape's words were heavy with condescension. "They didn't print your side of the story, Potter; you just gave them an excuse to keep the story in the papers longer."

"Yeah, and you think that's what I want, don't you," Harry shot back wrathfully.

"Yes, I think that's exactly what you want," he said, watching Harry glower with a certain satisfaction. "Though I can't imagine why you enjoy it when all they do is make you out to be a liar."

"I'm sure you _really_ disagree with them," Harry spat.

"I admit, their analysis of your character has some merit," but Harry could tell Snape said it just to aggravate him, and strangely that made him feel vaguely flattered.

Still, he flushed furiously. "Oh does it now."

A slight glimmer in Severus' eye betrayed his satisfaction that Potter was on the defensive, but h had no chance to reply, because Potter continued talking. "Yeah, I just really love it when they call me a psychotic attention seeking would-be hero who tells nasty lies to scare the Wizarding World and get himself in the paper."

"You certainly act like it, Potter, releasing a statement when they're already feeding on this like maggots on a corpse."

He stared determinedly into Snape's face, searching for something, and when he found it, he pounced. "I bet you think I'm saying something to keep it in the papers to humiliate you." Harry's mouth twisted wryly, but his expression slipped back into a scowl before he started speaking again. "This isn't about you _at all_."

"_Why did you open your mouth and give them something else to print?"_

"They'd be 'feeding on it' no matter what I did," Harry retorted swiftly, snatching the paper away from Snape and dropped it onto the desk in front of him.

"You didn't have to make it worse!" A fleck of spittle landed on Harry's cheek and he pulled a face.

"I didn't make it any worse," Harry roared. "Don't you see? I can't make it any worse. This is going to be in the papers until the Daily Prophet and the rest think it won't sell anymore!" Harry leaned over the desk sulkily. "They'll milk this for all it's worth no matter what I do, so I gave them my side."

"No one printed it, Potter!" For a moment, Harry considered correcting him and reminding him or their shared heritage again, but then he wiped the spittle from his cheek and thought better of it.

A slow smile spread across his face. "I guess you didn't see the Quibbler this morning."

"No one _sane_ printed it then! No one actually anyone reads!" Snape folded his arms. "That's worse than no one."

Harry didn't bother telling him that the Quibbler had become very popular during the war. "Only real idiots trust the Prophet about me anymore, and anyone who wants the real story knows where to find it. That's the best I can do," he said, trying to sound as reasonable as possible.

"Most of the people in the Wizarding World are idiots, and you fed into it!"

Harry clutched the newspaper and lifted the crumpling front page from where he had dropped it. "I'm _not_ feeding into it!" he yelled, abandoning the forced calm. "You've never had to deal with this before. I have! I had to say _something_, or they just get worse trying to force me to talk!" He pushed the page at Snape. "This is _damage control_!"

Snape snorted, and Harry glared at him. "Just wait, in a week, the papers will all be writing about your suspicious silence."

Severus glared back at him, folding his hands across his chest. "Are you trying to tell me that _I_ should make a statement?"

"No," Harry drew in a breath. "I'm just telling you why I did."

Snape visibly regained his composure. "You may leave then, dismissed."

Harry turned to go and muttered under his breath, "I'm glad I have your _permission_."

Snape's head snapped up, and Harry stared back. He hadn't thought Snape would hear that. "Wait Potter."

"Are you going to give me detention?" he asked boldly."

"No," the professor responded resentfully.

"Because you don't exactly have grounds."

"I'm fully cognizant of that fact, Potter."

Harry scowled at him. "Why do you have to talk that way?"

"What way?"

"Why couldn't you have just said 'I know that' instead."

Snape glowered at him. "I say that sometimes as well, Potter."

"Yeah, I know," Harry grumbled, "but only when you're shouting." Snape raised an eyebrow.

Harry stood against the wall, waiting for Snape to tell him he could leave again, but he still Started when Snape finally spoke. "Potter."

"Yeah?" he said without thinking, and was astonished when Snape didn't snap "yes Sir" at him.

"You really believe that releasing a statement was the best option you had to handle this?"

Harry blinked at him, uncertain what he should say, or what Snape wanted out of the answer. "Yeah," he said at last. "Nothing I could have done would have been very good, but this is the best, yeah."

Snape nodded. "Go then."

Harry nodded in reply and left.

Severus sat back in his chair and glowered balefully at the stone wall on the other side of his classroom. The wall neither shook nor crumbled, and he didn't know how long he sat there watching it until the next class piled through the door. They were the Hufflepuff second years, and he had to observe carefully as they examined the dozen or so dark detectors he had brought to class for them to study. One girl lifted up a tiny sneak sneakoscope and was so surprised when it started to twirl on her palm that she dropped it.

Severus vanished the worthless shards of charmed glass from the floor with a sharp flick of his wand. "Clumsy little fool," he snarled, but it was almost perfunctory.


	26. Spring

Chapter Twenty-Six: Spring

As the last of the students trooped into Hogsmeade to catch the school train, Severus hefted a stack of notebooks and parchment into his arms, a small bottle in his pocket and wound his way through the empty corridors to the gargoyle entrance to Minerva's office. He gave the password to the gargoyle (Maine Coon) and mounted the stairwell, and at the top, rapped his knuckles against her office door. A shuffling from within heralded the headmistress' rise and walk to the door just before it opened. "Was there something you wanted to see me about, Severus?" She asked him, and he steeled himself.

"I have some highly interesting information for you regarding the fraud and intellectual theft of one of the professors of this school," he informed her primly, suppressing the urge to rub his hands together with glee.

She blinked. "Which professor?"

"Damocles Belby."

Minerva didn't bother raising an eyebrow, or telling him that those were serious allegations. "I never knew you were so possessive of your former post."

Severus' eyebrows however, did rise, and then knitted together low over his eyes. "Hardly," he hissed, handing her the notebooks. "I recognized something of my own after that Corner boy disintegrated half of the classroom." He set his own leather bound notebook on her desk triumphantly.

She flipped through the notebook, glancing at the dates at the top of each page. "You recognized this particular notebook through a hole in a filing cabinet after nearly twenty years?"

"Oh yes." There hadn't been holes in the filing cabinet. There had been gaping metallic wounds. "I hadn't been precisely thrilled to lose two years worth of notes!" Whatever reluctance he had harbored previously about turning Belby in evaporated. With his cover already blown and the whole castle whispering his secrets to each other, he barely noticed whatever wriggling Belby still managed to produce in his anxiety over the discovery of his fraud by an unknown silent party, and if revealing the man's theft caused another scandal for the students and the papers to feast on, so much the better.

"You're only coming forward with this now?" she almost sounded suspicious, but not quite.

"There is no _risk_ anymore."

Minerva sighed deeply. "I suppose I'll need to be looking for a new Potions Master." Severus' face twisted smugly as he propped the stack of notebooks and parchment on her desk. Her eyes continued to flicker over his notes until she stopped suddenly. "Wolfsbane Potion?" she breathed.

"I would appreciate it of you would keep that out of the papers," he said tartly.

Her smile was sharp and catlike, "Afraid of a little glory, Severus?" No doubt she could ascertain is motives for creating the potion in the first place, as unflattering as they were. "_None_ of this will be in the papers."

"What!" he squawked irately.

"Think, Severus!" If I go to the press, or even to the Ministry, with your word alone that none of these documents have been tampered with, and the press still crucifying you however they can, do you think I will be believed?"

"I only retrieved ten years of notes. There were plenty of others."

She waved aside his assertion. "He's almost certainly destroyed them by now."

"He _Obliviated_ me and stole two years of my work!" he snarled. "I want _some_ retribution!"

"It will have to wait, Severus," Minerva patted his arm gently. "We'll both we watching him; he has to slip up some time." Severus glowered, nodded curtly, and turned to leave. "It will be enough of a challenge getting rid of Damocles quietly,' she muttered as he pulled her office door closed behind him.

* * *

Harry settled against the cushions and gazed out the window while Hermione and Ron bickered reassuringly near the compartment door. A faint drizzle pittered onto the train windows and collected into rivulets as fields the train began to move out of the station and under the open sky. He glanced nervously at the pile of presents sitting next to him unwrapped that he'd picked up the week before in Hogsmeade. Hermione spotted the direction of his gaze and stopped arguing with Ron. "Honestly Harry, he's a year old. If it's toy shaped, he'll like it, and if he doesn't, he won't hold it against you."

"Hmm," Harry replied and Hermione snorted, opening her Herbology notes. Ron read a Quidditch magazine and Harry listened absentmindedly to the sounds of the train filling up and the rustling of students finding compartments. The door slid open and Harry wrinkled his nose as Malfoy peered inside. Ron, Hermione, and Harry leapt to their feet, their wands raised at the intruder.

Malfoy's gaze fell on the egg shaped rattle and the tiger pillow growling softly next to Harry. "Regressing back to infancy, Potter?" he drawled casually.

"It's for my godson, Malfoy." Harry shifted his weight, ready to spring at Malfoy if he came through the compartment door, but Malfoy, for all his bluster, didn't quite dare.

"Who in their right mind would make you a godfather?" he sneered, and Harry gripped his wand a little tighter.

"That's none of your concern," Hermione told him tartly. "Now get out."

Malfoy waved his arms arms at the doorway. "I already am out."

"Good," Harry flicked his wand and the compartment door slammed closed. The three could hear loud indignant shuffles from the other side. Hermione's head bowed to her notes without comment.

Harry flipped idly through his Charms book, but he didn't actually read. The drizzle turned into a gentle rain, and then into a heavy rain, and then into a full storm, the clouds darkening into black, as the train sped southwards. At last, as they neared London, the clouds blew away and the sun peaked out.

Harry could see Andromeda Tonks and Teddy, his canary yellow hair curling beneath his miniature fisherman's hat. He waved at them, but her expression didn't change, and he didn't think she saw. The three pressed into the crush of students trying to get onto the platform. As soon as they could get through, Hermione ran out to her parents and Ron spotted Mrs. Weasley. Harry nodded at her, and Ron tugged his sleeve. When he walked towards her, Harry followed.

"Hi Mrs. Weasley," Harry said timidly.

She smiled at him frostily. "Hello Harry."

Harry ducked his head and supposed he couldn't blame her for being mad at him. He hear Ginny step up behind him. "I have to er, find Mrs. Tonks," he mumbled. "Bye then." He glanced back at Ginny as he walked away, but the expression on her face was inscrutable.

Andromeda Tonks waved him over and he wheeled his handcart over to her. "Hi Mrs. Tonks."

"Call me Andromeda, Harry," she said with a smile. Harry smiled back, and some of the tension in his shoulders lifted. With a rustle of feathers, Bodmin hooted irritably. Teddy laughed, showing his first few teeth, reaching for the cage. Andromeda turned to the side to snatch his hand back. "You don't want that Teddy," she told him, handing him a stuffed dog. He grasped it and looked at it suspiciously for a moment before turning back to Bodmin. "That's a handsome owl you have."

"Thanks, but she's mean." Harry laughed and Teddy looked at him curiously. "How do you get him through the Muggle world without anyone noticing?" he asked as Teddy's eyes became as round as Bodmin's and just as orange.

"I have to Apparate to and from the platform. I'd forgotten how hard this was; I just hope he's a little more circumspect when he's older than Dora." She shook her head, "Do you remember what the back garden looks like?"

"Er, I think so."

"We'll Apparate to there then." With a crack, she disappeared with her grandson and Harry followed. He landed with a squelch in the mud beside the pond in Andromeda's back garden. "You wouldn't mind taking your shoes off when you come inside, would you?" she asked from the doorway.

* * *

Later that evening after Teddy had been put to bed, Harry sat across from Andromeda on the sofa in the sitting room. She poured him a cup of tea, and he spooned four mounds of sugar into it. "It amazes me how much of a boy you really are," she laughed, nodding at his cup. He added another spoonful just for show, and she laughed harder.

Fiddling with his cup, Harry watched her apprehensively. "Ron puts in more sugar than tea."

"So did Dora," Andromeda told him with a faraway look. "And then she'd spill it on the carpet." Harry made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat and Andromeda shook her head. "I hope you like it here."

"It's much nicer than Number Twelve Grimmauld place."

She snorted into her cup. "I hope so!" Her mouth twitched and then twisted. "Please tell me you weren't expecting my home to be anything like-"

Harry rushed to reassure her. "No, it's just I mean; I'd probably be staying there for the Holidays if you hadn't invited me."

Her grimace deepened. "I'm glad I invited you then. That place will need quite a bit of renovation if you intend to live in it."

"I don't," he said shortly.

"Pity," she responded blandly, a strange look in her eyes that might have been suppressed laughter or might have been a flicker of rage.

"Why?" Harry could only think about how much Sirius had hated his ancestral home, how chill and gloomy and oppressive and miserable the house had been when he had visited.

A wicked grin blossomed across her face. "It's delightful, isn't it, the thought of making that dilapidated mess into the happy home of a half-blood and his family? My aunt and uncle, your godfather's parents that is, would be outright writhing in the family crypt."

"I suppose that's true," a speculative expression fluttered across his face. "But I don't think the house likes me very much."

"It's a bit set in its ways, but it's only two hundred years old." Only? thought Harry. "That's not long enough for too much malice to sink into the walls, even with my family calling it home."

"Can hatred really become part of the house like that?" Harry asked afraid he sounded stupid.

Andromeda sent him a piercing look. "What do you think?"

Harry flushed.

"Mind, if you intend to live there, you should have the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures go through it."

"We've run into some nasty little-" Harry stopped himself before he swore in front of his godson's grandmother, "monsters, but I think I can handle them."

She laughed, "No, I mean the Spirit Division."

"Why?" he queried nonplussed.

"Orpheus, the thirteen year old brother of one of my ancestors from the seventeenth century, followed from the old Black residence."

"I've never seen him," Harry told her.

"You wouldn't. He doesn't show himself much except when he's watching any young women in the house getting dressed."

"Really?" Harry asked alarmed, making a note to ask Hermione if she had ever had any problems with him.

"Oh yes, he drove Cissy to tears once when she was fourteen and we stayed over for that summer."

Harry couldn't make himself feel too sorry that a ghost had ogled a teenaged Mrs. Malfoy's bits. Actually, he hoped she had been mortified. "I'll have to get rid of him then." He wondered if he could convince the Ministry to send him to Malfoy Manor.

"Certainly before you invite any young women over," she said archly, wiggling her eyebrows. Harry flushed. "Or before you have any daughters." Harry flushed deeper.

"You really make it sound like a lot of fun to live in a house with..." he trailed of trying to figure out how to say it.

"With moldering works of art, hidden passages, phantasms with sordid habits, and a strange and lingering miasma?"

"Yes, exactly, what am I supposed to-" his head jerked to look at her. "Wait, secret passages?"

She nodded. "A few. Nothing terribly exciting, the sort of thing that my several times great grandparents probably thought they should have to give it the proper feel.

"So what am I supposed to do with it?" Harry plowed on.

"Well," she smiled, "you could always settle down and write gothic novels."

* * *

The days passed quietly, and Harry slowly began to dread going back to Hogwarts to face the whispers, the owls, Snape, Ginny, and even just his N.E.W.T.s, which felt so unimportant next to everything else. On the morning of Teddy's early birthday party, Harry wrapped the tiger pillow and carried it out of the guest room. Guests trickled in at lunch time, and gifts made a heap next to the two birthday cakes, a miniature one for teddy, and a normal sized one of the guests.

As soon as everyone had arrived, Andromeda set the little cake in front of Teddy and the guests crowded around to watch. Harry was trying to figure out what was so exciting about watching a one year old boy eat a cake when Teddy grabbed a fist full of icing. He looked at it with a puzzled expression, and then shook his hand to get it off. When it stuck fast, his face turned red, and Harry thought he was going to start screaming. As quickly as he could, Harry sprinted over to his chair and swiped a finger across the icing. He poked it into Teddy's open mouth, and as soon as his godson tasted the icing, he sucked happily on the finger until it was gone. Then he looked again at his icing covered hand and shoved the icing into his mouth. His hair turned blue to match the icing and he smiled widely. After that, Teddy slowly demolished the little cake, Andromeda snapping photographs every step of the way.

When Harry had taken the crumb covered plate away from Teddy, he gazed around the room bemusedly. "I didn't know who to invite," Andromeda told him. "None of my friends have young children any more." She sighed. "I invited Bella and Cissy to every one of Dora's birthday parties, that that's only because I knew they wouldn't come."

"Err…" He played with the collar of his shirt and tried not to look too uncomfortable.

"I wanted to remind them that they had a half-blood niece. After Bella was arrested, I even had the invitations sent to Azkaban, but I don't know if she ever got any of them." He nodded in what he hoped was a commiserating manner as a heavily pregnant Fleur sauntered over to stand next to them, a plate with cake on it in one hand.

"When's the baby due?" Andromeda asked pleasantly.

"In a month, I will be glad when zis is over." She loaded her fork up with cake and took a bite. "Ze cake is wonderful, Andromeda."

Andromeda bowed her head in acknowledgement. "I hope it doesn't spoil your lovely figure," she teased.

"I am afraid zat zair isn't much left to spoil," she laughed, and Harry decided it was time to leave them to their conversation.

A few of Andromeda's friends had brought their grand children. Teddy looked around and blinked at them uncertainly from his perch next to the table, icing covering his face. Andromeda took one last photograph and then wiped his face and hands off with a damp cloth before lifting him down.

He stood there wobbly for a moment, before he sat down on the floor and she put a present from the table in front of him. He ripped excitedly but ineffectually at it for a few minutes before he managed to pull the paper free from the red rubber ball (which turned out to be a Ritterman's self catching and retrieving levitation ball) but he seemed to be more interested in the paper. Andromeda popped another present in front of him, and soon there was a sizable pile of paper next to him. The younger children at the party played with the paper and no one had the heart to throw it away quite yet, but sat around eating their cake and talking instead.

A little girl with dark brown hair and a green party dress who looked very alone and grown up compared to the other children at the party tugged on his arm. He looked down at her and she stood on her tiptoes. "It's my birthday next week," she told him.

"Really? How old are you going to be?"

"Six," she told him proudly, "and I want a pink frog."

Her grandmother, a tall, square faced woman with an under bite, caught up with her and scolded, "Honestly Beatrice, your mother told you, they'll get you a frog when you start at Hogwarts." She didn't look placated, but scampered off to play tag with some of the older children in the garden. Her grandmother looked out at the ground, still soggy from the rain the day before and said confidently, "That dress is going to be absolutely covered in mud in a moment."

* * *

The Friday before Harry was to leave for Hogwarts, he trekked down to Diagon Ally to buy the parchment, quills, and ink that he had forgotten to buy in Hogsmeade before he left. On his way to the stationary store, he saw a sign for a sale on gobstones in a shop window. Getting an idea, he stepped inside and searched through the gobstones sets until he found a porcelain set with little red foxes glazed on the white spheres. He paid a few sickles for them at the counter and then pocketed them and left. As he turned the clear bag of gobstones over in his hand, one of the foxes gave him a strangely accusatory stare, and he decided they were perfect.

When he returned with his purchases and packed them all way neatly in his trunk, Bodmin hooted at him irritably and he handed her an owl treat. "Don't worry," he told her, "We go home on Sunday."

* * *

The only thing Harry had left to do was scramble around trying to find missing pairs of shoes and his cauldron, which he had taken out to find a clean shirt the week before, and to fish out the assorted toddler toys that had somehow made their way into his trunk over the course of the three weeks he had stayed.

When he came into the kitchen, dragging his trunk behind him, Teddy had his arms wrapped tightly around a squealing racecar that sped away like a rocket as soon as he let it go. He giggled as the car ran in circles around Harry's feet and then stopped next to him again. With a chubby palmed clap, the car jumped into his lap like a frightened lapdog and squealed and revved to go again.

Andromeda placed two plates of scrambled eggs and toast on the table. As Harry sat down and buttered his toast, he poked the eggs with a fork. "I don't think I've ever eaten so many scrambled eggs in so short a time as I have while I've been here."

Her smile didn't reach their eyes, which had the same faraway look that he had seen in them on his first night with her. "They're really just about the only thing I can cook, having grown up with house elves. Ted used to cook in self defense."

"And the cakes?" he queried curiously.

She pinked. "I begged Molly to make them, but she said she didn't have the time with everyone staying at her house for the holidays, so I had them made at a Muggle bakery."

"Oh," he murmured, and then louder, he said, "you used a very good bakery."

A grin tugged at her lips before it disappeared. "Yes, that's one thing I do know how to do. I can find the best of anything."

Teddy abandoned his toy car and crawled over to his grandmother. She didn't notice him until he tugged at her trouser leg. Looping an arm around his middle and swinging him upside down to her shoulder as he giggled and shrieked, she plopped him down in his high chair, slid his tray in place, and piled it with scrambled eggs and puréed bananas. He poked his finger into the bananas, then in the egg, and then into his mouth, a scowl on his face at being put down. Harry swallowed a forkful of eggs and watched her, and she caught his eye. "He's really a very easy baby," she told Harry, patting Teddy's chubby thigh. "Dora wasn't. She was colicky, and even after she grew out of that, she was a fussy demanding baby."

"Really?" it didn't sound much like adult Tonks at all.

"She didn't start sleeping through the night until she was almost three." She shrugged her shoulders eloquently. "Ted and I nearly went spare." With a splat, Teddy launched some of his banana covered egg onto the floor. "This one's been sleeping through the night since he was two months old." She bent over to wipe up the sticky smeared baby food.

In the muted grey light of the early morning, Harry found himself reminded of another bleaker kitchen and a woman who didn't know she would be pregnant very soon. He sat and gazed at her, a bite of toast still trapped behind his teeth, wondering if Snape had been an easy or colicky baby or somewhere in between. He wondered if Eileen ever told Tobias Snape about magic or if she had allowed him to find out on his own when Snape had started levitating things around the house as a child.

He snapped back to himself and shook his head when Andromeda suggested that he looked like he needed some sleep before Apparating to King's Cross later that morning. "I don't know why you were up so early in the first place."

Teddy spent the rest of breakfast attempting to throw food at Harry, but it landed haphazardly on the side of the table nearest the high chair instead. Only a few sticky pieces actually made it into his stomach. Handing Teddy a bottle full of milk, Andromeda cleaned his hands with a wet towel and wiped away the leftover banana on the high chair. Tears pooled at the corner of her grandson's eyes as she scrubbed at the childish squiggles of banana used as finger paint. Harry had just enough warning to stick his fingers in his ears before he started screaming.

Flicking Teddy's wrinkled nose gently, Andromeda pulled the bottle out of his slack fingers and stuck it into his open crying mouth. "There you go," she cooed as he latched on and started to suck. After one large gulp, he pulled the bottle out of his mouth and banged it on the damp but clean tray, but when Andromeda tried to take it away from him, he pulled it to his chest and quieted.

"I think it's best if he keeps it," Harry said nervously. She nodded her agreement.

After breakfast, Harry found himself staring at the ceiling of the guest room and running his fingers over the bag of gobstones absentmindedly. He nibbled on the last of the Easter candy Ron's mother had sent him and dozed, surprised when he woke an hour later. Supposing he needed sleep more than he thought he had, he turned over and took a nap.

"Harry!" Andromeda called, and he woke with a start. "It's ten minutes to eleven!" Harry bolted out of bed and raced to the front door. A deafening shriek stopped him short before he Apparated with Andromeda and Teddy, however, and he sprinted back to fetch Bodmin, who nipped at him through the bars of her cage. In the kitchen, Bodmin resting on the counter top, Harry we his fingers at the tap and ran them through his hair, trying to make it look like he hadn't just popped out of bed, but it didn't help. Andromeda saw him, and pressed his hair flat before vanishing with Teddy in a large crack. Harry followed a few seconds later.

Teddy shrieked with laughter when he saw Bodmin, who didn't take well to being Apparated very well at all, puffed with fury. "Give me a kiss," he said to his godson, who nibbled sloppily on his nose in reply, and Harry figured that was close enough. He pecked Teddy's cheek, folded his hands and nodded awkwardly to Andromeda, and headed for the train.

His eyes on his feet to make sure that he didn't step on anyone in the crowded platform, he didn't notice the figure in front of him moving away from her family. He looked up for a moment, and the figure met his eyes. "Harry!" she called. Ginny Weasley was waiting for him on the platform.


	27. Making it Worse

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Making it Worse

Harry stuttered, running his hand over his hair again to flatten it. Ginny's own thick orange braid swung haphazardly as she bounded over to him, anxiety and hesitation written all over her features. "Harry," she said again, her shoulders hunched inwards, "I, err…"

"Ginny!" he blurted, desperately wishing he could form a coherent thought around the buzzing in his ears.

"I'msorryIspiedonyouandSnape," she burst out, her words running together in her nervousness. Tears clung to her lashes like dew, making them stick out in clumps. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright," he told her before he could stop himself, or even knew what he was saying, and she seized him around his shoulders in a fierce embrace before he could take it back. Awkwardly, he patted her back while she nuzzled his neck and he found himself wondering fleetingly whether or not it really could be alright that easily.

"I was so afraid that something was wrong, and you weren't telling me _anything_, and you told Hermione, and you left me here while you and Ron and Hermione went to destroy the Horcruxes, and I had no idea where you were or how you were doing, and I only knew you were alive because You-Know-Who would be shouting it from the rooftops if he'd managed to kill you, and no one ever tells me anything, and I just thought you were protecting me and treating me like a little _kid_ like _everyone_ does…" she drew a breath that hitched in her throat and turned into a sob.

He rubbed her back and made soothing sounds as he slowly guided her up to the train. "It's alright," he said again, stepping up into the train and helping Ginny up after him, and then with more than a bit of surprise, eyes wide, continued, "it really is."

She sniffed and wiped the tears and mucus off her face with a bunched up tissue. "I was afraid, Harry," she whispered, kissing his jaw. "I had to do something to make myself less afraid."

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ron spot them and begin to follow, but Hermione, who was standing next to him, held him back with a small smile. "Yeah, I know but…" he trailed off.

"I know I shouldn't have," she said plaintively.

They sidled into an empty compartment and Ginny slid the door shut behind them. "But that just makes it worse," he told her unhappily. "You did it anyway." But he didn't pursue it. It didn't really matter. He didn't really care; he just wanted everything to be back to normal. Tired and drawn as he felt just then, he didn't want to be fighting with anyone, not Ginny, or Hermione, or Ron, or even Snape.

Out of the compartment window, he spotted Mrs. Weasley watching anxiously from the platform. He waved nervously, but she didn't react. She probably didn't know it was him, he reasoned, if she saw it at all. After all, she didn't know which window was theirs anyway.

"I know," Ginny replied miserably. As he turned back to her and they settled into a seat, he rubbed her back harder and she settled into the crook of his arm. He kissed her hair fondly. With a squeal of pure joy, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him deeply. Shocked into silence, he kissed her back.

The train started moving so slowly at first that they didn't feel it start. It seemed as if the station itself were moving backwards. He spotted George out of the corner of his eye as the train gathered speed, looking woebegone and as un-George-like as Harry ever expected to see him. He caught sight of them and waved with a small smile.

As the station fell away, Ginny leaned against the padded back of the compartment seat. The silvery light that shimmered through the thick layer of clouds and streamed through the window fell onto her face and hair. "I was lonely without you," she whispered, a note of wry self pity creeping into her voice.

"No you weren't," Harry reminded gently, "I saw you." At first she had avoided everyone to sit with the first years, but one day, there she was, sitting with her friends, laughing and making impressions, the center of the sixth year girls again. Harry had missed her horribly then.

Her mouth twisted. "Yeah, but I didn't want to go out with anyone else, though Anthony Goldstein and Summerby _did_ ask me."

A sudden flash of jealousy flashed through him. "Really?"

"Yeah," she mumbled, "but I put them off. I… I missed you."

Harry's face heated. "You did?"

For one horrible moment, Harry thought she was going to start crying again, but she swallowed hard and gazed at the ceiling instead. "Yeah."

"I missed you too."

When she looked down again, a bit of the wetness gathering in her eyes trickled down her cheek as a tear, but she smiled winsomely. "Of course you did." She flicked the tear away and shook her head. "I'm glad, though."

"Of course, I didn't miss you that much," he assured her.

"Of course," she replied cheekily, nuzzling his neck. "That would have shown weakness."

He kissed her hair and inhaled the scent of her flowery shampoo. "It's nice to have you back, though."

She grinned disarmingly against his shoulder. "I know it is."

Over the chugging din of the train wheels grinding against the track, he and Ginny could hear the bickering of a compartment full of Slytherin seventh years. Malfoy's drawl cut through the low buzz of voices as his housemates fell silent. Harry wrapped his arm around Ginny's waist and pulled her snuggly against him. She kissed his cheek and looked away. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"I wish you'd told me." Harry wished she hadn't spied on him, but he let it pass.

"Would it have made a difference if I'd told you?" he asked quietly. Her hand found his, and he almost thought she had a fever, because her skin felt so warm where it touched him.

She shivered. "No." Harry hadn't thought so. A secret core of cowardliness within him had kept him from telling her the truth in the first place, and he could only imagine what she would have done if he'd told her that he'd just spent three months with another woman and had a child with her as she asked him if they could get back together. Harry nibbled her ear as she tapped his nose with her forefinger. "It would have made no difference."

* * *

Minerva ushered Belby into her office trying to hide her trepidation, and on an entirely different level, the intense excitement slowly building somewhere in her chest. He ran a hand through the tufts of brown hair growing in a band around the back of his head. "Was their something you wished to talk to me about, Headmistress?"

As the students sped toward the castle, Minerva smiled tightly. "You'rej a fine brewer, and one of the most creative minds in the potions field alive today," she gushed, watching the professor loom over her desk, perched atop the chair across from her like a plucked vulture.

"Thank you," he said, taken aback, looking up from the desk into her face.

"Of course, this is why I contacted you about the professorship in the first place," she continued, clearing her throat flushing as she oozed false gratitude. He nodded, eyes like two grapefruits sunken into his head, his head shaking up and down twitching. "I just want you to know that I recognize the sacrifice you're making to teach here…" she trailed off, uncertain of how far she could take this and keep him believing her.

"Is there any particular reason you wished to speak to me before the term began?" he asked, sounding surer of himself, his droning voice taking on a hint of condescension.

"To tell you the truth,' she lied happily, "I'm a little unsettled about some rumors I've been hearing about your work."

"Has my teaching been unsatisfactory?" he asked, somehow managing a timid rumble. They had been as it happened. Hermione Granger had come to her wringing her hands to tell the headmistress that she didn't understand a word the professor said.

"No," she said, not having to fake her apprehension. "That isn't it at all!" She wrung her hands, and then clasped one of his. "It's only that I've heard that you're close to another major breakthrough, and I just wanted to remind you not to neglect your students, especially not now, so soon before exams, in your pursuit of your next invention."

He clasped her hands with the hand she wasn't holding. "Have no fear, Headmistress, I will not neglect the students."

She smiled, aping reassurance with everything she had. She had barely anything left over from trying not to smirk with satisfaction. She had him, and as soon as he revealed the new potion she had convinced him everyone was expecting, she'd send in the Aurors to unmask him. "Thank you, Professor. Now, I'm sure you have lesson plans to go over before the students arrive?" She stood and opened tie door for him, and as he walked out, he bowed to her, smugly.

When the door had latched safely shut behind him, she collapsed into her chair with relief, her knees almost giving out on her halfway across the office floor, grinning broadly. She supposed she would have to warn Severus about the change of plans, because, after all, he was expecting her to sack Belby. For a Gryffindor, she said to herself, she had just done something very Slytherin indeed.

* * *

By the time the Hogwarts Express had pulled into the Hogsmeade train station, somehow every student in the school knew that Harry and Ginny had made up. Even before the carriages arrived at the castle, the professors somehow knew too. When they sat down to eat together at the Gryffindor table, Ron grinned widely at them, and Hermione raised both eyebrows and exclaimed, "Welcome back." Harry shrugged his shoulders at her.

Harry's eyes wandered to the head table and the triumphant sneer that consumed Snape's features every time he glanced at Belby. He seemed to find reasons to glance at his fellow professor more than he normally did. Harry looked back to his plate, glad that Snape was directing that expression at someone other than him.

"It's really weird thinking of him as your kid," Ginny whispered amost shyly, seeing where he was looking. "He isn't anything like you." He nodded vaguely, his stomach sank to his ankles and began to squirm as he found himself disagreeing with her.

Before the food could appear before them, McGonagall stood up and flicked her eyes over the students and announced the date for the next Hogsmeade weekend, and reminded the Quidditch captains that they had to sign up for the spring pitch schedule by Friday. Harry listened halfheartedly, and planned to go to Madam Hooch's office after he ate, his stomach rumbling after the long train ride.

When McGonagall folded herself back into her seat, the tables filled with food and the four of them piled their plates high. Harry had his fork almost to his mouth before he heard a swish and twisted around in his chair to watch Snape pass by his seat and sweep out of the Great Hall, his jaw clenched with ire. Harry turned back around, his eyes wide, and Ginny wrinkled her nose. "Oooh, I still have detention with him tonight." Ron snickered, undisturbed at his sister's discomfort.

Harry winced in what he tried to insure was an empathetic manner and muttered his excuses. Slinking between the tables, he tried not to make it too obvious that he was following Snape, but no one he glanced at embarrassedly looked fooled.

Halfway to Snape's office, Harry caught up with him. Snape snarled at him as he fell in beside him, but Harry ignored him, despite seeking him out in the first place, until he snapped, "What do you want, Potter?"

Harry shrugged. "What was that?" he asked instead of answering.

Snape stopped cold and glowered up into his face. "Do you feel that it's your paternal duty to chastise me for making a scene?" he jibed.

"I don't know," Harry replied, tone infuriatingly neutral, unable to figure out why he had followed at all. "Do you want me to?"

Snape's expression snapped shut. "No."

"Do I get to know what was wrong?" he asked irritably, swinging his arms and sincerely wishing he hadn't followed.

"You gave up the right to know anything about me when you returned to the present, Potter!" he jeered, turning his back and continuing down the corridor.

A terrible suspicion blossomed in Harry's mind. Startled, he called down the hall, "You don't want me to have stayed, do you?"

"No!" the man yelped horrified.

"Imagine being raised by me," he mused, relieved that his words were at last finding some purchase, "as a family."

"An absolutely revolting prospect," he hissed, "which we are all lucky to have avoided." Snape whiled around again and resumed striding jerkily down the corridor. Harry followed, a few steps behind, making a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. When he heard from whence the noise came, Snape shot a scowl over his shoulder. Do you intend to follow me for the rest of the evening, Potter?" he spat through clenched teeth.

Harry shrugged. "Probably, it depends on when you tell me."

"I'm not going to tell you anything," Snape turned around and dropped his voice mock patiently, "no matter how long your sudden compulsion to seek my company lasts. Leave before I give you a week's detention."

Harry reeled back. "I don't _have_ a sudden compulsion to seek your company," he cried defensively, "I just want to know why you ran out of the Great Hall!"

"Honing you parental interrogation technique?" he sneered sarcastically. "Just think, boy, someday you might want to have children."

"You're really are jealous!" he said softly, looking up, suddenly enlightened.

"Are you mad?" but his high pitched denial only made Harry much more confident in his conclusion.

"You're mad that I came back," Harry gasped. "You can't stand me, you _hate_ me, but you're still mad I left you there."

Snape regained his calm before Harry could run away with his idea. With a snort, he brought his student back to the present.

"You are a supremely arrogant young man if you think I wanted-"

Harry cut him off deliberately. "No, it doesn't have anything to do with me," he said thoughtfully, "not at all, not really."

"No it doesn't," Snape returned, perturbed.

With a small sad smile, Harry turned to leave Snape to continue on, resigned that he wouldn't get anything out of the man. Something strange pinched at his stomach as he said, "Well, bye then." He'd messed something up.

Perhaps he hadn't messed it up that badly. It was Snape's turn to call him back, "I will not allow you to run away with such an erroneous impression of me, Potter," he called snidely. Surprised, Harry trotted back. Snape gritted his teeth in a sullen grimace. "No doubt if you _had_ raised me, I wouldn't consider you to be a malicious half-wit." He paused before adding snidely, "Of course, I might have gained your measure anyway."

"I'm sure you were a very clever child," Harry sniped irascibly.

Snape jerked, pulling his hand up sharply as if he wanted to slap him across the face. "You are so very much like your father, Potter, intelligence is something to admire, Potter, not deride, even if _you_ cannot comprehend it."

Harry glanced sharply at Snape, supposing he must have hit an old sore point. "You do realize that because he's my father, he's your grandfather, right?" he retorted, raising his eyebrows.

"You enjoy stating the obvious, don't you," he scoffed.

"I didn't mean intelligence anyway," he grimaced, pausing to think. Snape probably had been like Hermione, only many times worse, brilliant and knowing it, frustrated that everyone else wasn't brilliant too, and at the same time scornful of everyone who wasn't. Harry bet he let everyone else know he was brilliant too. "It's just that you still treat people like we're all idiots." He shook his head. "Besides, none of this has anything to do with me or my father."

They stopped abruptly at the door to Severus' office. Only then did he realize that his feet had carried him there instead of to Minerva's office as he had planned when he had left the Great Hall. He opened the door and ushered the boy in, bowing and smiling mockingly. Potter strode across the threshold calmly, but his eyes didn't leave Severus' face. He pushed the door shut with a hard push, still watching his student, grabbing one wrist behind his back. "You were saying?"

Harry wanted to ask him if he knew how conversations worked, because it was his turn to reply, not Harry's. Awkwardly, he shrugged his shoulders.

"_Well?_" snapped Severus, growing more and more annoyed with the boy's persistent crypticness.

"I just mean that you're not angry with me because I'm your dad, or because I didn't raise you," Harry said softly, suddenly nervous.

"No," Snape hissed deliberately, his lip curling. "I'm _furious_ with you for not going away and following me around like a lost puppy!"

"Then why did you call me back?" Harry shot back, hands trembling.

Severus jerked forward and then halted, rattled. "Don't be ridiculous, Potter; I didn't call you back," he denied at last. "I simply refused to let you walk away with such idiotic notions in your head."

Harry snorted, folding his arms. "Of course."

"If you're so sure you know everything about me," he snapped defiantly, "then you can tell me."

Harry looked down guiltily, but then fixed his gaze steadily on Snape's face. "You're mad that I told Eileen to marry Tobias Snape."

"I won't deny that you impressed me with your sheer heartlessness," hissed Snape, his nails digging into his wrist so hard that they left little bloodless half-moon shaped indentations in his flesh when he let go.

Harry's face heated. "I didn't want to…" he stopped speaking, catching his breath. "I didn't like doing it."

"Of course not," Severus sneered, sensing that at last he had the upper hand, "but you did it anyway," which was what mattered, after all.

"I had to!" Harry shouted, the last vestiges of calm draining away. "I... I already knew that I… couldn't stay, and when… I knew who you had to be."

Severus snorted and held back a burst of cold laughter. "You are not soothing my resentments, Potter," he jeered. "You are trying to force me to soothe your _guit_!"

"Don't turn this around-" but Severus cut him off.

"You left my mother and me in an untenable situation, because you had to, yes," a smile tugged at his lips as he continued brutally, "but you still were the one to do it."

Harry clutched the edge of Snape's desk, nails biting into the wood. "I don't need you to absolve me of anything!" he roared. "I knew what I was leaving Eileen and you to, but I couldn't do anything else!"

"You're fool if you think you know _anything_ about what-"

It was Harry's turn to cut Snape off with a sharp gesture. "That's right, you think I'm _spoiled_ that I've never had a hard day in my _life_," he threw his head back and laughed, seething.

"_Can you tell me that your every action hasn't borne out that assumption, Potter?"_

"You knew my aunt; you knew how much she hated magic; do you really think she spoiled me?" Every time Aunt Marge came to visit, Harry had found himself envying Ripper. Aunt Petunia hadn't liked Ripper any more than she had liked Harry, but she didn't want to antagonize Aunt Marge. "And then she married someone as bad as she is!"

"Did your make you do chores then?" Severus mocked, "treated you like a normal boy?"

"Normal boys don't live in cupboards," Harry pointed out, biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted the metallic tang of his own blood.

A vein in Severus' head throbbed. "Don't exaggerate Potter! You weren't beaten. You never watched someone you loved beaten."

"How would you know?" Harry snapped back furiously. "My uncle used to shake me or drag me places, but he never really hit me. My aunt slapped me or tried to hit me with frying pans, but I could usually dodge her, so no, they didn't beat me, but it wasn't like they stopped Dudley from beating me either." He stopped to catch his breath and glared at Snape, a pair of pink spots sitting like little burns on the top of his cheeks. "And there wasn't anyone I loved to begin with, and they all liked each other just _fine_."

"So you did know exactly what you were sending me into," Severus whispered darkly, his voice soft with surprise and calculation.

Harry nodded defiantly.

"But that just makes it worse," Severus' lip curled, false sympathy dripping from each word.

When Ginny showed up at Snape's office door for her detention only a little late, she had to dodge out of the way of the office door as it banged against the stone wall next to which she had been a moment earlier. Harry swept out of the office, a murderous expression on his face without seeing her. His robes billowed out behind him as he stalked down the hall and she crept into Snape's office.

* * *

Harry didn't immediately head to the Gryffindor common room. First, he skulked out to Madam Hooch's office and skittered his quill across the lines for the times he wanted under her watchful eye. She swept the parchment out from under his quill and blew on it before rolling it up into a scroll. Ink splattered all over her desk and started soaking into the wood grain. "That's one fourth of the times, Mr. Potter," the flying instructor told him crisply. "Your team doesn't get any more than that."

"Yes Madam Hooch," he intoned irritably, sticking her quill back into her inkwell.

"None of that," she ordered, tapping his arm gently with the scroll. Harry supposed he was lucky she liked anyone who could fly whole Quidditch game without cheating; otherwise he might have been the first student to get a detention from her in years.

He meandered his way down to the kitchens to make up for the meal he'd missed with cream puffs and a bowl of strawberry ice cream. By the time he had finished, he just felt tired, and his feet took him up to the Fat Lady's portrait. "You have something pink on your cheek," she told him as he muttered the password, a box of chocolate liquors open and half empty on her voluminous mauve silk covered lap.

Harry flicked it off. "Yeah, alright, will you let me in now?" The frame swung open and he stepped through the opening. His housemates lounged in chairs clustered around the fireplace. Atop his favorite chair sat a pile of scarlet envelopes snoring faintly. Bodmin stood on the padded arm of the chair, snapping testily at anyone who passed by too closely. Ginny sat close by and waved to him when he walked over. As he passed, the Howlers stopped snoring and fluttered sinisterly. Harry gathered as many of the bad tempered letters into his arms as he could and propped open one of the windows. Ginny carried the rest. They dropped the envelopes out the window and they flapped furiously before they caught fire on the way down. Harry shut the window on the shrieking.

"I'm really sorry, Harry," Ginny whispered, her eyes wet.

"It's alright." Harry slumped into the chair, exhausted, and Bodmin flew off to the Owlery.

She kissed his cheek warmly and touched her own cheek. "You have something sticky on your face," she told him, "right here."

"Yeah, I know," he mumbled, and she licked her finger and wiped it off.


	28. More Letters

Chapter Twenty-Eight: More Letters

Along with the two Howlers, the Daily Prophet, and the last three non-Howler hate letters, a stately black owl with star-like white speckles dropped a glossy purple envelope in front of Harry's plate on Wednesday morning. He broke the seal with some trepidation as he carried the Howlers into an empty stone floored hallway and left them, tossing the three hate letters down on top of them to catch fire when the Howlers did. They began shouting and wailing at him before he had even turned down the hall to go back to the Great Hall. Shaking out the letter, he squinted at the ornate gold script glittering against the lurid violet parchment.

_Mr. Harry Potter:_

_We of the Wizengamot wish to tender you an invitation to join our number. As you surely are aware, we are the most powerful governing body in Wizarding Britain. The bravery and ingenuity you displayed during the second half of the war with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has caused us to see you as worthy of a place amongst us as one among equals. As a member of the Wizengamot, you will be expected to participate as a juror in the important trials of the Wizarding World, to represent the Wizengamot with dignity, to appoint Ministry of Magic officials, including the Minister of Magic, to vote on vital matters of Wizarding governance, and to debate such matters on the Wizengamot floor. The workings of the Wizengamot are to be kept secret at all times, and members who reveal them to non-members are subject to expulsion and full trial. Please send your decision before the next conference of the Wizengamot, to take place on 30 April._

_Yours cordially,_

_Thaddeus Brookhurst, Chief Warlock,_

_On behalf of the Wizengamot, assembled 20 April, 1999._

He shivered. The paper, slick with gloss and Harry's sweat, slipped from his fingers and drifted downward, spinning in the small flurries of air that bounced off the stone walls. He caught it absentmindedly, and glanced at it again. Determinedly, he folded it and tucked it into his pocket.

Harry remembered Snape's supposition that he would be invited to become a Wizengamot member soon after he left school with only a trace of bitterness. He could almost hear Snape telling them that they hadn't waited to invite the hero of the Wizarding World to bolster their reputation. Leaning back against the stone wall, Harry resolved to thwart them and do nothing. It was his mostly good name, and he wasn't going to let them use it.

* * *

Over the course of the day, Harry did his best to forget about the letter. It wasn't that difficult. Snape assigned them all to one of two teams and set those teams to fight against each other with non-verbal spells. Padma Patil got a detention for whispering a hex, and Neville got one for muttering profanities at Snape under his breath. By the end of the class, more than half of the students had to troop down to the hospital wing for minor wounds. Hermione, who had managed to blast Zacharias Smith into the wall and knock him unconscious, levitated him through the halls, and Harry nursed a burnt hand from a stray scalding jinx. As he shoved his books into his bag, his hand smarted, and a fierce rush of dislike rose in his chest. He shot Snape a sour look when he rose, his eyes meeting the professor's own pleased expression. Harry gritted his teeth and left the room.

Madam Pomfrey hefted a canary yellow bucket full of Murtlap essence onto the table next to Harry, muttering darkly, "Melee duels in school, I should make him brew the potions. Sit back down and put your hand back in that bucket, Mr. Potter!" Harry slumped back onto the stool and sank his hand back into the slimy fluid.

"When you sent Smith actually spinning through the air into that wall, and his head went thud," Ron punched his palm enthusiastically, "I mean, Hermione!" He perched on the table next to Harry's essence of Murtlap, smiling. Hermione, who was fussing over Smith's split forehead, barely spared him a glance.

"Leave off, Ron," Harry said quietly.

Ron peered at one of the beds and the tentacle covered figure within. "That spell you hit Nott with was fantastic, and did you see that Leporidae jinx I hit Parkinson with? Do you think Madam Pomfrey will remember to get rid of the tail?"

Harry gave in, his eyes flicking over to the curtains that Parkinson had insisted be drawn shut to hide her new rabbit ears, cotton ball tail, and soft white fur all over her face. "I'm sure Pansy will remind her if she forgets," or even if she didn't.

"Huh, I bet." For a brief moment, Harry found himself uncomfortably reminded of DA, but he dismissed the comparison. DA had always been much better organized.

"Anyone who isn't injured, please exit the hospital wing," Madam Pomfrey bellowed, "or I'll see to it that you'll be washing bed pans until the end of the week!"

"Sorry mate," Ron said ruefully, grinning and hopping off the table.

"Coward," Hermione jibed, following him out of the room.

"I don't see you staying to clean bed pans, now do I?" he shot back, leaving the room with her.

After Madam Pomfrey checked his hand and released him from the hospital wing, he had to scramble to Charms, missing lunch entirely. Ron and Hermione saved him a seat somewhere in the middle of the class only a few minutes late, and he sank into it gingerly. Empty desks dotted the classroom, and Harry glanced over at Pansy Parkinson's desk with a smirk. His stomach rumbled loudly while Flitwick lectured about the Fidelius Charm.

"The Fidelius Charm of course has limited use," Filitwick squeaked, "as it is an immensely complicated charm to perform. It also requires enormous trust in the chosen Secret-Keeper, who by definition usually holds the spell's object or objects' continued existence in their hands." The color fled from Harry's face, leaving it a pasty grey. "Likewise, if the Secret-Keeper should die, anyone who had been previously told the secret would become a Secret Keeper in their own right." By the end of the lesson, Harry didn't care about missing breakfast and lunch. In fact, he didn't mind not eating dinner either. His stomach churned, and while Hermione and Ron bickered, he slipped off to the common room to sit on the end of his bed and stare out the window.

When Ron and Hermione made their way with the rest of their housemates to Gryffindor Tower, Ron had a plate of food, piled high with boiled chicken, mashed potatoes, and stewed carrots. Setting it on the side table next to Harry, who spared it a pained look, he threw himself onto the bed next to him with a sigh. "Did you start that Potions essay yet?" asked Ron, falsely nonchalant, "the one about combining crushed moonstone and wormwood roots?"

"Erm, well, I wrote my name on the parchment." Harry toyed with the sleeve of his shirt.

"Yeah, that's as far as I got too," Ron heaved an obvious sigh of relief, but Harry ignored it politely. Ron pushed the plate closer to him, and Harry picked it up. The chicken was lukewarm and the potatoes and carrots were cold and dry, but as soon as he too a bite, his stomach remembered that he hadn't eaten yet that day, and he ate it all. "Actually I put a title on it too."

Harry laughed, "Yeah, I did the reading though. That counts for something, I guess." He put his hands in his pockets and his thumbnail caught on the Wizengamot's invitation. He pulled it out, remembered what it was, and stuffed it back into his pocket.

"What's that?" Ron queried, catching sight of the shocking purple paper.

"Oh," Harry took it out again. "A letter from the Wizengamot. They're inviting me to become a member."

Ron's eyes went wide and his curved up in an openmouthed smile. "Wicked!"

"Well, I wasn't going to say yes," he mumbled.

"Yeah, well…" Ron began. "What! Why not?" Harry shrugged his shoulders. "You should! Hey, you could make laws, make sure none of the other Death Eaters get off like the Malfoys," he favored Harry with a sidelong glance, "nominate Dad for a pay raise…"

Harry let his friend trail off. "Yeah, but I don't like the Wizengamot," he said quiely. "I don't want to support them."

"But if you're one of them, you can change how they do things!" Ron lept off the bed and paced excitedly, his arms swinging. "You don't just have to go along with everything they say like most of us!"

Harry lay back against the wall, thinking. "It isn't that simple," he said at last, "I'd probably be on the losing side of every vote anyway."

Ron stopped at the foot of Harry's bed, energy unabated. "Yeah, but you can speak to them, and nominate what do you call them, dark horses to the Wizengamot who would vote like you!"

Harry made a noncommittal noise as Neville padded into the dormitory in his striped pajamas and greying bunny slippers. Ron smiled seeing them, his eyes misting over.

* * *

The next morning, Hermione met the boys at the bottom of the dormitory stairs. "Guess what Harry got yesterday," Ron crowed, shoving the letter that he had filched out of Harry's trouser pocket sometime during the night. Harry groaned softly and kneaded his forehead with his knuckles.

Hermione's eyes flicked over the words, her mouth drawing into a small "O". "Oooooh, Harry! This is really really exciting!" Her hands clenched on the letter eagerly, but noticing, she folded the letter again and handed it back to Harry. "Do you know what this means?" Harry was pretty sure he knew what it meant to him, but he had a feeling that Hermione had a very different idea about meaning than he did. He shook his head slowly, blinking behind his glasses. "It means that they're afraid of you."

With a small nod, he shoved the letter back into his pocket. "Yeah, I know.

Hermione though, had the bit between her teeth. "They'll have to listen to you and even sometimes do what you say, because you're you."

"Snape says that they invite anyone who becomes too popular," Harry said quietly.

"It's what they did for Dumbledore, you know." Hermione touched her lip thoughtfully, "They even made him Chief Warlock because his criticism of them rang a bit hallow when he was supposedly leading them."

I never understood," Ron interrupted, "Why didn't Dumbledore change more?"

"Well, the Chief warlock can't do much, can he?" Hermione scathed. "The Wizengamot is ruled by the majority of members, and he was usually in the minority." Harry nudged Ron with his elbow and Hermione fiddled with a strand of hair, trying to get it unhooked from around her cloak button, "He did a lot though, much more than he could have done outside the Wizengamot."

From everything Harry heard and was still hearing, that didn't seem like it would be hard. It was almost impossible to do any good at all outside the Wizengamot. "I wasn't planning on saying yes to them," he said definitively, trying to get them to both stop talking about it. "I don't exactly want them using my name."

"But you have to, Harry!" Hermione exclaimed, her voice getting higher with each word. "You don't understand, you could be our spy! You could leak the contents of their secret meetings!" Her cheeks flushed with pleasure, and Harry suddenly found himself remembering with a bit of horror fourth year and S.P.E.W. She had that sort of look in her eye, and Harry was terrified that she had found another cause.

Unfortunately, it seemed Ron had found the same cause. "Hey, you could tell Luna, and she could print them up, and then we'd actually know what's going on!" He dug around in Harry's pocket and pulled out the letter again and smoothed it out. Harry pushed him away and tried to snatch the letter back. "You'd have to keep from getting caught, though. Can you be sent to Azkaban for saying what their doing?"

Harry grabbed the letter and it slipped out of Ron's hands. "I guess so," he muttered. "They wouldn't have a big trial if the punishment weren't awful"

"You'd just have to keep yourself from getting caught, now don't you?" Hermione told him briskly, and Harry dearly wished to know if she had any idea how to do that.

"It's not going to help much, just knowing what's going on," Harry whispered, eyes on the floor. "I mean, no one can do anything."

When he raised his eyes, they met Hermione's. Fury, faint disgust, and shock flashed through them before they settled on confusion. "If people know what's going on, they can fight it. If the Wizengamot members knew that what they were saying would show up in the papers, they might be a bit more circumspect in what they do! They hide behind their secrecy and their trial and their Azkaban threats, because they know that if Wizarding Britain knew what they do in their-" she coughed significantly- "hallowed chambers, it would rise up against them and displace them!"

Ron nodded. "I want to see their names splashed across the front page for a change."

Harry flushed scarlet. "They've calmed down for the moment."

Hermione forced a smile. "Look, you have eight days still to decide. It can wait." Harry sighed with relief.

* * *

Throughout the day, his housemates and students from each of the houses except for Slytherin congratulated him on the invitation. Harry just stammered and wished they'd go away. Ginny smiled wickedly at him and thanked everyone for him, teasing him at every turn. He let her do it, because it was easier to let her take care of it. Her teasing was easier to stomach than everyone's praise and encouragement. "I suppose you think I should accept too," he grumbled, swallowing a mouthful of pumpkin juice.

Ginny leaned back, grabbing onto the bottom of the table. "Well, I, er," she bit her lip, "actually, no, I don't. I think you should tell them what they can do with their invitation, actually."

Harry raised his eyebrows until they started to blend with his hair. "Why?"

Ginny shrugged, pulling herself back up on the bench. "I just don't think it's a good idea; they just want you there to make you think you'll have some say, but none of the other members are really going to listen to you unless you convince them that you're just the same as they are, and to do that, you'd really become like they are." She shuddered, shaking her head, talking very quickly. "They'd change you, and ruin you, and you wouldn't be you anymore, and nothing about them would change at all. It's better just to speak out against them."

"But that doesn't do any good either."

"It does something, of they wouldn't care enough to invite you to join!" Ginny's mouth twisted in a fierce grin. "They're scared of you saying they're wrong, so give them what they're scared of."

"Why is it," Harry stopped, wondering how he should say what he wanted to say without sounding like an idiot, or insulting her, which would have been worse. "Well, you and Ron aren't really…" he trailed off, deciding there wasn't any way to say it.

"The most political?" She provided diplomatically.

"I just mean that you're both normal. If you know all of this and think this way, then don't most people already?"

"Dad's in the Ministry so Ron and I heard stories, and Hermione's _Hermione_."

Harry decided that probably described Hermione perfectly, because she was miserable unless she was fixing something. She realized too much of what was wrong with the world to be happy with leaving it as it was. "Oh."

Ginny had a strange small smile on her face that vanished before Harry could comment on it. "The summer before fourth year, well, my fourth year anyway, when we all moved into Grimmauld place, Ron and Hermione were always together trying to figure out what was going on, and Fred and George were busy working on joke stuff, so I spent a lot of time with Sirius, over the Christmas holidays too." She took a bite of her shepherd's pie and then another. "He told me about not getting a trial and Crouch almost becoming Minister of Magic. I'm not blind."

Harry did his best to take what she said calmly, but he flinched anyway. "I know," he murmured, taking another sip of juice. He swallowed it harshly and grimaced. "Hermione and Ron want me to accept and then leak the goings on to the press, have Luna print the minutes."

"I know, I heard the three of you talking about it in the common room this morning." Shaking her head sharply, Ginny shoved a forkful of sliced pear into her mouth. "The Wizengamot would figure out pretty soon it was you spilling their secrets and throw you in Azkaban."

"I wouldn't start passing things along right away," stammered Harry, stung that she thought he'd make it that obvious, and stunned to realize he was arguing for accepting the inviation. "I'd wait a bit first."

Her fork chimed loudly as she set it down. "It doesn't matter," she retorted solemnly. "You could wait _years_ if you wanted to, but you can't act inconspicuous at all." She grinned at him, "It's not a bad thing that you're so honest. There are people who can deceive people for years, and spy on them and manipulate them, but you're just not one of them, Harry. It's a good thing, most of the time, really it is."

"I _would_ lie," he muttered.

She laughed and pulled a face. "I know how you lie Harry, no one would believe you."

"Are you saying I can't keep secrets?" he demanded indignantly.

"You can keep secrets if no one looks at you to closely."

"If no one _spies on me_ you mean?" he gasped furiously, leaning away from her.

"That wasn't what I meant," Ginny snapped, recovering quickly, "and you know it."

"Then what exactly _did_ you mean?" he hissed, stabbing into his broccoli viciously.

When you have a secret, everyone knows it!" she shouted. "Your face screams it, and when you bother to deny it, it only makes it more obvious." Unspoken, Ginny remembered somewhat wistfully, somewhat jealously, all of the times Harry, Ron, and Hermione had skulked around uncovering their mysteries, their eagerness, fear, and naked curiosity plain on their faces and in the way they carried themselves throughout the school. Harry wasn't afraid or eager to have secrets anymore, she thought sadly. They just made him unhappy.

Harry rolled his shoulders inward and hunched over his plate and didn't answer when Ginny shot to her feet and told him that she had to go to detention with Snape again. His silence drew from her an odd look, and he realized uncomfortably that the one person best suited for spying on and manipulating the Wizengamot as the one she had to serve detention with five evenings a week. Suddenly less insulted, he smiled wryly and wished her luck.

"Huh," she shot back with a grin, "I need more than that with Snape."

* * *

When Ginny returned to the common room, it was with a scowl and a smudge on her face, which turned out to be dried pig's blood. "He had me feeding Red Caps," she hissed by way of explanation. "I almost lost my fingers." She sank down into an armchair beside Harry, "He gave me another week's detention, too."

"What did you do?" asked Harry nervously, with the sinking feeling that she would be stuck in detention with Snape for the rest of the year, and possibly the next as well.

Hermione stumbled into the common room after her own detention with Filch, her hands red and chapped, eyes bleary. As Ginny answered, she slumped into the chair on the other side of Ron from Harry. "I swore at it when it bit me," she shrugged, showing him a lived gash on her index finger. "He's lucky I didn't hex the thing."

"And he gave you a week's detention just for that? I'd like to see him not swear when a great ugly Red Cap latches onto his finger!" Ron raged from Harry's other side.

"I'm sure he just likes having the free labor you provide," Hermione commented, amused. Ginny just snorted.

Ron poked Harry's arm. "Did you think anymore about the Wizengamot?"

Harry shrugged his shoulders and wondered if Ron would count the tense half debate half fight he had with Ginny as thinking about it. "Yeah, a bit."

"_And?_" he urged impatiently.

"I'm not going to accept."

"Oh but you have to, Harry!" Hermione gasped, leaning forward in her chair to face him around Ron's body. Harry shrugged again, not wanting to talk to her about it.

Ginny glanced at him before rising to her feet and marching over to face her brother and Hermione. Lowering herself down to perch on the armrest of Ron's chair, she favored both of them with a nasty look. "He doesn't have to if he doesn't want to."

He sprang to his feet as soon as they started to yell about things that could get him sent to Azkaban, and grabbed Ginny's arm. "If you're going to shout," he pleaded, trying to sound sensible, "could you wait until you're no in the common room anymore?"

Hermione cleared her throat, chagrinned, but Ginny flushed to the roots of her orange hair, remembering another row in the common room. The three bolted up the stairs to the seventh year boy's dormitory, by mutual agreement choosing to have an argument. Harry followed close behind them, shutting the door safely once they were all inside. Ginny cast a silencing charm on the door for good measure before she repeated, "He doesn't have to if he doesn't want to."

Deciding he was adequately defended, Harry scooped up his nightclothes and slipped into the boy's showers, but he didn't turn on the water. Instead, he pressed his ear to the doorway and listened. "Ginny," Hermione began, "It's not your fight, It's Harry's." Harry found he had to agree, but he didn't mind Ginny fighting it for him instead.

"Yeah, but he doesn't want to have it, and I don't think you should keep pushing it on him!" Harry peered though the keyhole to see Ginny sitting cross legged on his bed. "He doesn't want to join, and I agree with him!"

Hermione widened her eyes and stared at her, trying to convey the gravity of the situation as she spoke. "Don't you see why this is so important, why he has to join? If their meetings aren't secret anymore, they might actually care about what ordinary witches and wizards think!" Ginny folded her arms with a scowl, but Hermione continued on, undeterred. "Besides, we lost Dumbledore, and if we don't have someone in the Wizengamot who cares about people, we risk losing what he worked for just through stagnation!"

Ginny laughed scornfully. "Harry's no Dumbledore, and no one in the Wizengaomot is going to listen to a word he says about keeping Dumbledore's laws unless they were going to keep them anyway. Besides, the moment he stars talking to the press, they'll send him straight to Azkaban, and then where will the cause for transparency and justice be?"

Resting against the canopy post, Ron blinked. "They can't send him to Azkaban, the only reason they're inviting him to join in the first place is that he's too popular."

Before she answered, Ginny let herself fall back against Harry's bed. "Don't you remember when the whole school thought he was Slytherin's heir, or when most of the Wizarding World thought he was a self-obsessed maniac? It's easier to invite him in than to make him look like a nutter again, but if he makes problems again, they'll be happy to before they ship him off to Azkaban."

"He can lie," Hermione shot back, "He managed to keep Snape a secret at Hogwarts of all places for _months_!"

Ginny mulled that over. Truthfully, she hadn't thought that anyone, much less Harry could have kept a secret for that long at Hogwarts. "He'll need more than months, won't he?" Hermione arched an eyebrow smugly, seeing the argument for the week thing that it was, but Ginny drove onwards. "That's not the point anyway. Harry's not good at fighting in secret and smiling at people he doesn't trust or think are good people. He needs to fight in the open, call people out, be direct. If he did manage to politely manipulate the Wizengamot, it would destroy him." She pushed herself up into a sitting position, glaring sullenly at both of them before marching stiffly out of the room. Hermione followed awkwardly a few moments later. Harry shucked his clothes and twisted the shower knob.

* * *

When Harry stepped dripping back into the dormitory, Ron was sitting on his bed, his Transfiguration text book propped up on his knees, frantically scribbling an essay. He waved his quill lackadaisically at Harry as he padded out, barefooted, giving into the restlessness gathering in the pit of his stomach and the arteries of his legs. Outside the tower, he shivered from the chill that hung around the castle hall even in the middle of the summer. With his damp hair and bare feet, in the middle of the spring, the corridor was icy. For a moment, he thought about going back for a cloak, but the Fat Lady had disappeared. His feet carried him to a stairway, and as he neared the bottom, the staircase started to move. He sat on the bottom step, his feet singing gently in the empty air. Just before the staircase slid into its new place, he curled his legs up, out of the way.

It didn't surprise Harry too much to realize he was standing in front of Snape's office door. He swallowed convulsively and turned around to head back to the security of the tower. As he turned however, the door swung open, and Snape furrowed his brow, staring straight at him. "What are you doing here, Potter?"

"N-nothing" he stuttered, stepping backwards, ready to run.

Snape's eyes moved up and down over his body, taking in his snitch covered vermilion pajamas with a smirk. "Really," but he caught Harry's wrist, twisting it cruelly.

Harry tried to yank it out of Snape's grip, but it wouldn't budge. Finally in desperation, Harry burst out, "I wanted your advice."

"I'm flattered," he sneered, "now get back to your dormitory." Yet he still hadn't let go of Harry's wrist.

"Yeah, well, I figure whatever you tell me to do, I'll know that I should do the opposite." He jerked his arm again, but instead of letting him go, Snape dragged him into his office and shut the door behind him.

"Ask your advice," he snarled, shoving Harry into a chair in front of his desk.

Harry rubbed his newly liberated wrist gingerly. So unprepared was Harry that the words tumbled from his mouth. "The Wizengamot invited me to join."

"Of course they did," Snape smirked again. "None of them are fools, no matter how much they act like it. Deny them."

Harry ignored him. "Ron and Hermione want me to join and leak the goings on to the press, and well, try to talk people into doing the right thing."

Snape's lip curled. "You don't have the remotest idea about what the right thing is, Potter. Anyone willing to trust the Wizarding World's government to your _good intentions_ is an idiot."

Harry tried to stand up, but Snape was in the way. "I don't think you'd trust the government to anyone but yourself," he shot back. "You think everyone's an idiot."

Severus gritted his teeth and refrained from saying that nearly everyone _was_ an idiot. "You have neither the intelligence nor the ruthlessness necessary to manipulate the Wizengamot into acting in the best interests of the Wizarding World even were you to have the faintest notion of what the best interests of the Wizarding World were!"

"I think I have some idea," Harry hissed, affronted, "real trials, less corruption, elections, and big newspapers that aren't Ministry puppets."

"Did Granger give you a list?" he sneered. "I stand corrected."

Harry shook his head sharply. If anyone had given him a list, it was Snape, right after the Malfoys' trial. "Hermione didn't give me anything."

"Precisely how would you go about attaining your worthy goals?" Snape spat, cutting Harry off as he opened his mouth. "Would you lie, and smile, and make friends with people you think are worse than dragon dung?" His lips twitched up into a frightening smile and Harry shuddered, leaning back in the chair. Snape stepped back, peering at him self-satisfied out of heavy lidded eyes. "I could be wrong, you did show commendable mercilessness by siring me."

Harry found his feet with a start, gripping the armrests and pushing himself up. "I didn't expect-"

Snape cut him off again, a peculiar ugly look on his face. "But once you had done so, you went out of your way to see that everything unfolded in my life the way it did."

Harry strode toward him until he stood next to the door, baffled as to why he hadn't bolted as soon as Snape had let him up. He turned the doorknob, and the door swung outwards. "You know why I left you there," he hissed back. "You can't have wanted to come with me."

"I'm talking of something far worse than leaving me to my particular," he paused with a sneer "childhood situation." Harry slipped out the door, but stopped, still holding the door handle, mesmerized. "You left me to my fate knowing exactly what I would do, that I would spy on Dumbedore and Trelawney and pass the half of the prophesy that I heard on to the Dark Lord. You knew that he would hear that prophesy and assume the child it spoke of was you, and that he would kill the Potters because of it." He smiled nastily and Harry cringed backwards, unable to leave. "Your direct actions led to your parents' deaths, Potter; you had as much a hand in it as I or the Dark Lord had."

Harry gasped and released the doorknob, and Snape pulled the door closed with a harsh click.


	29. Gobstones

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Gobstones

Harry walked back to Gryffindor Tower in a daze of self-recrimination. His footfalls echoed dully on the stone floor, and by the time he had made it back to his four poster bed, he never wanted to come out from under the covers again. The light from Ron's candle trickled through the thick velvet drapes, staining the air a dark unhealthy maroon, and Harry's blood pounded in his ears above the sharp scratching of Ron's quill. With a sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach, Harry wondered why he had never thought about the fact that he'd contributed to his parents' deaths by leaving Eileen and keeping things the way they were.

The candle went out and plunged the dormitory into darkness. Harry heard the faint rustling that told of his roommates climbing into bed and settling under their covers. Within a few minutes, faint snoring filled the room, but Harry couldn't sleep. He pushed the curtain open to breathe and look out the window at the half full moon. Tears spilled from his eyes as he sat up and curled his knees against his chest. His whole childhood, he had tried to find a reason why he had to live with his aunt and uncle, instead of with his parents, or friends, or with anyone who didn't shove him in a cupboard and feed him as little as possible. When he had been very little, he had thought that every family had a child that they didn't want hidden away somewhere, but when he had gone to school and there was no one like him, he had wanted to know why. In some way, it was vaguely comforting to know that he had been part of the process that had put him there after all.

As quietly as he could, he slipped the photo album Hagrid had made for him at the end of first year. Letting it fall open onto his lap, he traced the forms of his parents in a silent apology before he closed it and fell asleep with it in his arms like a small child.

* * *

Before Harry went down to breakfast the next morning, red eyed and quieter than usual, he had composed the first draft of an acceptance letter to the Wizengamot. Before lunch, he had ripped it to pieces and thrown it into the fireplace. With a last dark look, he slunk up to the dormitory and rummaged through his trunk for his Charms book. His hand slid across slick plastic as he tugged fresh parchment free from the jumble in his trunk to shove it into his bag. He hafted the sack of gobstones in the palm of his hand as if testing their weight before throwing it as hard as he could back into his trunk and slamming the lid.

Ron peered over at him. "Something wrong?"

"No," Harry responded, swinging his bag over his shoulder with unnecessary violence. "Why do you ask?"

Ron stared. "Alright then."

Most weeks, Harry would have been much happier if Ginny had her free period on Friday before lunch with his instead of after. That Friday however, he tip-toed through the common room hoping he didn't have to talk to her. He had no such reprieve, though. She smiled at him as he passed the chair in which she lay, head and feet hanging over the armrests with a careless sort of grace. Hauling herself at the waist and leaning over her knees, Ginny poked his arm. "You alright?

"Yeah," he mumbled, and she wrinkled her nose, brimming with skepticism.

"Sure you are," she replied dubiously after an awkward pause, hopping down from the chair. "Since I don't have to be anywhere for a few hours, do you mind if I walk with you?" Harry couldn't think of a way to say no to her, so he nodded reluctantly. Her hand slipped into his and she squeezed it gently as they stepped out of the common room together. "Where did you go last night, Harry?" she smiled as she said it, trying to keep it from sounding like an accusation, because it wasn't one, really.

"I didn't-"

She cut him off. "I saw you. Those snitch pajamas were very memorable, actually."

Harry's face colored. "Oh."

"So are you going to tell me?"

"I was just, wandering around, walking," he lied, looking away.

She glanced at his face sharply, but when she spoke, her tone was teasing. "Yeah, you always go out wandering in the evenings and spend the next morning staring at Snape like you hope he chokes on his bacon."

"He ate waffles this morning."

"See?" she refused to be deterred, "You were watching him closely enough to notice that."

"If you knew where I was, why did you ask?" he questioned, doing his best to keep his voice light and untroubled, but he didn't think he had fooled her at all.

"I want to know what he said to you," she hissed fiercely, brown eyes slitted unhappily. "I want to know what he did to upset you like this!"

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "He was just… being Snape."

Ginny pulled her hand out of his and folded her arms across her chest. "_How_ was he being himself this time?" she demanded. He shrugged again, unable to make himself repeat Snape's words, but Ginny pressed on. "What did he say?"

The words wanted to rush out, but he held them in until he could shape them into something that made sense. He sucked in a large breath. "After the Malfoys' trial, Snape told me that the Wizengamot would invite me to become a member because they like to have popular heroes join them so that they can look better." Ginny nodded, wrapping her hand around his again, and he licked his lips which had gone dry. "So I guess I went to him for advice." Harry didn't really know why he had gone, only that he had. "He said I should refuse because I wasn't ruthless enough to lie to everyone that way."

She kissed his cheek lightly and leaned her head on his shoulder, guiltily agreeing with Snape wholeheartedly. "I wouldn't love you if you were."

Swallowing, Harry continued, his voice rough. "He said I was ruthless enough, later though, because I left him with Eileen knowing he would grow up to overhear the prophesy and pass it on to Voldemort…" he swallowed again, trying desperately to bring some moisture to the dry tissue of his throat, "and knowing that Voldemort would hear it and decide to kill my parents and me because of it." Ginny gasped, white with rage, eyes suddenly wide. "He said that I had as much to do with their deaths as Voldemort."

Her hands suddenly cold, she dropped his and threw her arms around him, pulling him close. He froze, ridged in her embrace until she kissed him furiously, nibbling his lower lip until he opened his mouth and kissed her back. Hugging him tightly, when she surfaced from the kiss, she breathed into his ear, "Don't you dare listen to him." She clung tightly to his shoulders as she walked him to class, and at the classroom door, he let her pull him into another deep kiss.

* * *

The soapy brush scraped against the clear aquarium walls as Ginny scrubbed it under Snape's inscrutable gaze. From its place in the sturdy little spare cage, the Red Cap waved its bloody wool hat at her and grinned nastily, showing off its sharp black teeth. She hissed at it wordlessly, aping its predatory manner unconsciously, fingering her wand, and the Red Cap hunched back irritably. Ginny seethed, the brush slipping again and again from her fingers as the furious shaking in her hands made her clumsy and anger clouded the edges of her vision. "If you crack the glass, Miss Weasley, I will see to it that your parents pay for it." Snape's voice cut through the furious buzzing in her ears, and Ginny's nails dug into the wood handle. "Or perhaps I should send the bill to Potter instead. I doubt your parents have sufficient funds."

The brush hit the plastic bottom of the aquarium, bouncing. Ginny whirled around, her teeth bared. "Don't you _dare_ talk about Harry!" she snarled. "I know what you said to him about it being his fault his parents died. You had no right!"

Snape leveled her with a cold stare. "Do you want another detention, Miss Weasley? I'd be more than happy to oblige."

"I don't care if you give me detentions every night until the end of seventh year!" she snapped, her face flushed around her freckles. The Red Cap started screeching and rocking his cage so hard that she was worried that he would tumble off the top of the bookcase that she had set him on earlier. "Shut it!" she shouted at it, but it only started screaming louder. Snape whipped out his wand and hit it with a silencing charm and then a freezing charm. The cage wobbled for a moment before coming to rest only a few inches from where it had begun.

"That is a dangerous declaration," he said quietly, and she had to strain to hear him.

"_So_?" she fired back defiantly, without needing to think.

"And if I stripped every point Gryffindor has?" he hissed threateningly. "I'm sure your housemates would adore you for that."

"I don't care about that either," she hissed back, her arms folded tightly over her chest, her hands each clutching the opposite arm. "You said something really horrible to Harry, and I'm going to make sure you know it."

"How, pray tell are you going to do that? You have already said your piece."

Ginny didn't have any idea right then, but she was sure she could come up with something quickly. "You'll know in a few days. I want you to stew about it and wonder what I'm going to do to you."

"You have a very inflated sense of your own self importance if you believe that I am intimidated by the mere suggestion of a few pranks." His wand twitched in his hand, and Ginny supposed he wasn't afraid at all. He was angry though.

"They won't be pranks," she asserted, putting on her best show of confidence. "They'll be," she searched her mind for the best word, "retribution."

"Fifty points from Gryffindor!" he thundered, "Get out!" Ginny scampered out of the office, throwing her bag over her shoulder as she ran. With a backwards smirk at his office door, Ginny chose to believe she had won that round.

* * *

That night, Harry found himself thinking of Eileen as he curled up in one of the armchairs in the common room. The last of the students, three "old" first year girls, first years who had suffered through Snape's tenure as headmaster, ascended the stairs to their dormitory, leaving him alone in front of the empty fireplace. The lights in the common room went out a few minutes later, and the only light left was from the moon and the stars outside the window. Someone had latched the window improperly, and it had blown open. The curtains fluttered eerily in the purple darkness, and Harry wrapped himself tighter around his knees, against the chill damp breeze.

Her face had always opened up when she smiled, when the faint sulkiness that she had always worn dissipated. He had felt so trapped with her in that house, shut in for months before Eileen had given in and gone walking with him by the river. Harry shivered, his fingers twitching, remembering the way her hand had felt inside his.

With an abrupt pang in the center of his chest, Harry wanted to rush up to his dormitory, drag the pillow and blankets off of his bed and make a nest out of them. He wanted to start a fire in the fireplace and drink a cup of tea as he watched it die. His hand brushed the arm of the chair, and he stroked the plush fabric with the tip of his finger, imagining for a moment that it was strands of black hair. Her shampoo had smelled of lilacs, he remembered.

Eileen had been so uncertain, and trying so hard to hide it. He had been as uncertain as she, and scared, with no idea what he was supposed to do. After a while, going home hadn't mattered much. After a while, he would have happily stayed in the past for the rest of his life. Tears ran down his cheeks and he swiped at them, blotting his eyes with his robe. He remembered the way Eileen had looked at him when she had told him she was pregnant, and how the dreamlike world they had made came crashing down around him when he realized with a horrible shock why he had come, and why he had to go back. She had wanted him to stay as much as he had wanted to never leave.

Heaving a sigh, Harry pushed himself to his feet. He pushed the window closed and dropped the latch into place. Metal clinked against metal as he wiped the last remnants of tears away from his face and blinked back the dampness in his eyes. He padded his way up the stairs without turning on the lights or lighting his wand. Stumbling in the dark, Harry fell a few steps before he caught himself and crept into his dormitory, slipping into bed without bothering to undress, careful not to wake the four boys sleeping close by.

* * *

Saturday dawned bright and warm, with only a few wisps of cloud outside the dormitory window. Harry slept late in the morning sun, almost missing breakfast and scrambling down to the Great Hall just in time to see someone else take the last of the bacon. "Why didn't you wake me?" he grumbled to Ron, plopping down beside him and piling his plate high with scrambled eggs and toast.

Ron stuffed a forkful of sausage into his mouth and gulped it down before he answered. "You looked like you could use the rest, mate."

Hermione smirked at his chest, and Harry looked down at the gaps in his shirt where he had buttoned the buttons into the wrong holes. "It looks like you could still use some," she said as he unbuttoned and rebuttoned his shirt.

Harry muttered, smoothing his shirt and sleepily nibbling on toast. A few places down the table, Ginny snored softly next to a full plate. "She didn't get to bed until after three in the morning," Ron told him, seeing where he was looking. "Hermione had to go down and get everyone to go back to sleep after she came in, turned on all of the lights, and started passing around food."

"A little late for a kitchen raid," Harry commented, slipping out of his seat and stealing her bacon.

* * *

Back in the dormitory, Harry opened his trunk and pulled out the bag of gobstones, wincing. Foul smelling sludge coated the inside of the bag from where the gobstones had sprayed after he had thrown them in. Swearing under his breath, he opened the bag and vanished the slime with a sharp flick of his wand. He shut the bag tightly, and stuffed it into his pocket hissing at Neville, who sat on his bed, a quill in his mouth and his Herbology book open on his lap. "Neville!"

Neville jumped, and the book tumbled off of his lap, slamming shut. "What?" he mumbled, his words muffled by the feather in his mouth.

"Can I borrow your gobstones?"

"Yeah, sure," Neville replied, righting his book carefully on his bedside table, opening his trunk, and digging through it. "What do you want them for?"

Just after Neville tossed him the velvet sack with his gobstones in it, Harry said lightly, "I'm going to play gobstones with Snape." Neville stared in horrified puzzlement at him as he strode out of the dormitory deliberately.

The common room and the hallway were both mostly empty, as most of the students were spending the sunny spring Saturday outside, enjoying their fleeting freedom. Harry jogged through the corridors, winding his way downward, absentmindedly hearing the whispered conversations of the portraits along the way. He breathed deeply, his hands trembling around the lumpy bundles in his pockets. Glancing around him, he slouched into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and palmed a piece of chalk. He walked the last few steps to Snape's office door and stopped with a gulp and paused before he pulled his hand out of his pocket and knocked resolutely on the door.

The door opened smoothly, without creaking, and Snape stuck his head out to peer around the doorway. "What do you want?"

"Can I come in?" he asked, with as much temerity as he could summon.

Snape stepped aside sourly. "Get in, then."

Harry stepped inside, wiping his sweaty hands on his jeans. "Are you busy?"

"What do you want?" Snape repeated tersely. "Whether or not I am currently occupied has never stopped you from bothering me before, Potter."

Harry decided to take that as a no. "I wanted to talk to you."

"Then talk, Potter." Harry started feeling like an idiot, which he had been expecting, as it was par for the course when dealing with Snape.

"And I brought a gift." He held out the bag with the white gobstones with the glazed red foxes. Snape folded his hands behind his back and didn't take it.

Kneeling down in the center of the office floor, Harry took out the chalk he had stolen and sketched a large circle on the wood. "What are you doing?" Snape screeched murderously. "Are you out of your mind, Potter? Stop it!" He dropped to his knees and tried to pull Harry away from the circle, but Harry dumped both sets of gobstones into the circle. As soon as they landed, they lined up into two opposing circles near the center of the chalk circle. Snape's shooter tried to gather with his other gobstones, but Harry herded it back to the edge of the circle with his left hand. He yanked his arm down and out of Snape's grasp, tapping his wand on the asymmetrical chalk "circle" so that it shifted and evened into a perfect circle "You clean that up-"

"I would have drawn it on your desk, but the gobstones really don't like it when they fall off," Harry said, false innocently. "They start spraying slime everywhere-"

"We are not paying gobstones, Potter!"

"Would you rather play with Neville?" Harry asked sarcastically, dropping pretence. "They're his gobstones."

"You are expecting me to play with you, using Longbottom's gobstones?" Snape hissed, grabbing for Harry's arm again, but Harry scrambled away, and Snape overbalanced and fell to his knees with a loud thud.

"No," Harry told him, flicking Neville's shooter and sending it straight into Snape's circle of gobstones. "I'm expecting you to play with your set. I'm using Neville's."

One of Snape's new gobstones landed outside the circle and rolled over to its owner, squirting thick brown goo into Snape's face. Some of it landed in his mouth and up his nostrils. His face contorted venomously as he spit the goo onto the floor and wiped his face with his sleeve. With a sharp flick, he sent his shooter careening towards Harry's marbles, and Harry thought the professor didn't care much about playing with him, but wanted very badly to see Harry with a face full of horrible tasting brown sludge.

Harry's gobstones scattered with a harsh crack, but none of them sped out of the circle. With a sigh of relief, he fetched his own shooter and aimed at Snape's mostly intact circle of gobstones. One of the gobstones shot to the edge of the circle, and for a moment, Harry thought it was about to stop there, but Snape glowered a warning at it, and it started rolling again and made its way to Snape and sprayed him again. Plucking the two gobstones from their place at Snape's knees, Harry threw them into their original clear bag.

Taking careful aim, Snape sent his shooter directly at one of Harry's gobstones, sending it speeding out of the circle so hard that it bounced off the wall before it drifted lazily over to Harry and squirted its fluid into Harry's eyes. He snatched off his glasses and rubbed them clean with the edge of his shirt, not bothering to tuck it back in. When he looked up at Snape, he smirked, and Harry did his best to hide a victorious grin. He handed Neville's gobstone to Snape, who dropped it smugly into its velvet drawstring sack, and Harry sent another of Snape's spinning out of the circle.

"I used to play gobstones with your mum," Harry remarked. It wasn't the first time he had referred to Eileen as Snape's mum since he came back, but it felt strange even so. Slime dripping from his nose and cheeks, Snape gave the shooter a particularly hard flick, missing the gobstone that he was aiming for entirely. "Only we actually did play on the table. When they fell off, the gobstones would spin around the goo would make a little circle-"

"Shut up Potter, you sound like an imbecile."

"I got you to play, didn't I?" Harry shot back, sending another of Snape's gobstones out of the circle. Snape replied by propelling his shooter into one of Harry's borrowed gobstones, which hit another, and they both rocketed out of the circle. The sludge oozed down Harry's face and spilled onto the collar of his shirt. "You're much more enthusiastic than Eileen was, though," he said aggressively, sending his shooter flying into one of Snape's gobstones, but the glancing impact just made it spin instead of sending it speeding out of the circle.

"I bet she was significantly better than you," Snape muttered, shooting another of Harry's gobstones out of the circle, and he reflected that he sounded particularly childish.

"Well, she played a lot more than I did," Harry acknowledged, retrieving his shooter and flicking it at one of Snape's gobstones, "so she was. She was head of the gobstones club when she went to school here."

Snape did his best to hide his surprise, but before he reapplied his ordinary stern demeanor, Harry saw it. He supposed Eileen hadn't talked much about her time at Hogwarts when Snape was a child, and that made Harry inexplicably terribly sad. He shook his head while Snape sent one of his gobstones out of the circle and it squirted into Harry's hair. Why should that particularly make him sad, he wondered, when there were fat worse things about Snape's childhood than not hearing a few school stories?

He picked up the gobstone that he had just lost and brought it up to the light streaming into the office from the window. It was translucent purple glass, with a thick swirl of opaque green in the middle. Harry thought that they looked like little grapes. The light danced on the wood floor, twisting as his fingers trembled ever so slightly around the gobstone. With a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, Harry glanced at the window's edge to see that it was completely closed and latched. At last, he held the gobstone out to Snape, who snatched it away to put it in the velvet bag.

"I've been thinking," Harry began nervously, biting his bottom lip, "about what you said on Thursday."

Snape's expression froze, and Harry's skin became clammy, but he felt reassured that he had put Snape off balance for once. "I believe I made my meaning plain enough that you didn't have to think," Snape managed at last his voice cold, and Harry gulped.

"You made more plain than I think you realized," Harry said flatly. "I didn't know you felt that responsible for my parents' deaths." He paused for effect, unconsciously mimicking his son's method of attack, "As responsible as Voldemort." As nonchalantly as he could manage, he flicked his shooter without aiming it. It connected with one of Snape's gobstones, knocking it out of the circle.

Snape flinched back, and Harry felt a guilty rush of pleasure at scoring a hit. "My actions were the catalyst for the events that led to their deaths, Potter," he snarled, "Surely I bare responsibility." The shooter slammed into Harry's gobstone so hard, that Harry was worried it might shatter.

"Yeah, but you didn't know," Harry whispered, "You didn't know what he was going to do with what you heard, did you?" He did his best to squelch the terrible little voice that sprang up to remind him that _he_ had known, taking a leaf from Snape's book and lining up a shot that sent two gobstones rolling out of the circle at once. One rolled in Harry's direction, and he stopped it with the palm of his hand. It started to vibrate, and he let it go, making its way to Snape. The other gobstone waited for it to catch up before they both turned and sprayed him in tandem.

"I knew the Dark Lord would go after _someone_!" Snape shouted, his voice strangled. "And it was a fair assumtion that someone would be an infant." Harry could see a drop of dark, bluish blood on Snape's fingernail, where it had split when it collided with his shooter. Snape used his other finger to flick it at a gobstone. It spun lazily, stopping just a little bit away from the edge of the circle. Harry breathed a sigh of relief.

Harry flicked his own shooter, and it clacked dully against one of the fox gobstones, which sped out of the circle. "Still, you didn't know it would be someone you knew," he said gravely, swallowing, "someone real."

Snape used his thumb to send his shooter at another of Harry's gobstones, but he missed, and Harry rolled the shooter back to him. Momentarily gaining some of his composure, Snape focused on a spot on the wall above Harry's head. "Stop talking, Potter."

Harry ignored him and aimed his shooter. When the gobstone rolled over to empty its fluid into Snape's eyes, he finally spoke. "It doesn't matter, you still feel guilty, for both of them."

"Your mother, Potter, _Lily_-"

Harry shook his head, stopping him, barely seeing Snape's shooter sending one of his gobstones out of the circle, "No, not just my mother, my father too.

"Don't be ridiculous; I hated your father," his words came so fast that spittle landed in the circle, smearing the chalk and sticking to the floor.

His shooter thwacked against the last of Snape's gobstones, and it shot out of the circle and hit Snape in the knee. "I know," said Harry, smiling painfully, "but that just makes it worse." His son froze, unable to meet his eyes.

"I won," Harry said awkwardly, putting the last gobstone back into the bag and gathering up Neville's gobstones. He helped Snape to his feet and examined his fingernail. Tapping it with his wand, he cast a healing charm and held the hand uncertainly. He forced a sad smile. "I'd kiss it better, but I think you'd hex me." When Snape didn't reply, Harry dropped his hand and left his office, looking back to wave.

Before Harry realized it, he was back in the dormitory. Neville grinned at him, his eyes lingering on the stains on his shirt and the dried sludge on his face and hands. "So you really got Snape to play a game." Harry nodded.


	30. Detentions and Deliberations

Chapter Thirty: Detentions and Deliberations

The mid-afternoon sun glinted off the lake water and the damp made the air heavy and still. Hermione kissed Ron's cheek and languidly made her way towards his mouth, twisting her fingers into his own. He rested his other hand against the curve of her spine. There were times, he decided, when two people just had to be alone.

A snotty chuckle broke through their quiet closeness, and they turned abruptly to face the irritatingly familiar sound. Without Crabbe, Goyle looked unbalanced standing next to Malfoy, like a very large planet rotating around a very small star. Ron and Hermione never took their eyes off the pair as they slipped their wands out of their pockets and held them tensely at their sides. "Well well," Malfoy drawled, "I'm surprised to see Potter's lackeys without him."

"_You_ always were one to mistake friends for lackeys," Ron snarled.

Hermione smiled kindly, with a pointed look at Goyle, "Or lackeys for friends." Goyle grunted and cracked his knuckles menacingly, shifting his shoulders to appear even larger. "Did I hit a nerve?"

Malfoy grabbed his own wand and jabbed it into the empty air between them, holding Goyle back with his other hand. "I suppose you two _would_ have to kiss each other, because otherwise no one else would lock lips with either of you."

"Why so cranky, Malfoy?" Ron demanded, "Are you jealous, can't get Goyle to stop living in your pocket long enough to snog a girl?"

Hermione glanced at the opening in Malfoy's shoulder bag. "It could be that you're ashamed of your Muggle books," she remarked thoughtfully. "It's really annoying when you can't get away to read, isn't it?"

Goyle rushed forward to tackle them at the same time that Malfoy fired a whipping jinx at Ron. "_Petrificus Totalus!_" Hermione shouted, pointing her wand a Goyle and feeling like a first year, but the curse knocked him backwards onto the ground and she twisted around to face Malfoy with Ron. Ron stood up gasping and flinching "_Conjunctivito_," he shouted, slashing his wand through the air." Malfoy howled, rubbing his eyes franticly. Taking advantage of Malfoy's distraction, Ron pointed his wand at his own chest and muttered "_Finite Incantuatum_."

Squinting through crusted eyelashes, Malfoy pointed his wand at Hermione. "_Incarcerous_," he bellowed, and Hermione did her best to dodge the vine-like tendrils of rope, but one twined around her ankle and pulled her backward. The ropes wrapped around her, tying knots as soon as they had her tightly in their grasp, but her wand remained in her hands.

"_Furnunculus_," she roared, and watched in satisfaction as his pointy face erupted in boils.

Ron didn't even wait for her spell to hit him before he fired his own, "_Expelliarmus_." He caught the wand deftly while Hermione untangled herself from the ropes. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it into the lake.

Malfoy watched his wand bob in the water for a moment with a shocked expression plastered across his boil covered face, and then scrambled for the wand in Goyle's hand. Hermione remembered the spells in Snape's potion book with a hint of irony. _Levicorpus_, she thought without expression, and she and Ron started back towards the castle.

Malfoy surged into the air upside down with a squawk. "Put me down, Granger! Ron and Hermione's hands found each other as they kept walking, ignoring him as he fussed and wriggled behind them. "Granger! Weasley! Get back here!" The two decided to walk very slowly.

As soon as they were back inside, Hermione waved Harry over. "I hung Malfoy up by his ankle," she told him, and he raised his eyebrows. "He's out by the lake. Could you let him down in about a half an hour?"

Harry nodded. "What did he do?"

Ron scoffed. "He was Malfoy, isn't that enough?"

Harry flushed, "N-"

"He and Goyle attacked us," she slapped her forehead. "I forgot; Goyle's petrified too."

Harry pulled on his cloak. "Can't you let them stew for a bit?" Ron whined.

"No," Harry said, shaking his head and pushing the Fat Lady's portrait out into the hall.

He sprinted down the first set of stairs before he had to stop and catch his breath. The rest of the way out of the castle, he dragged his feet, but he raced through the grass as soon as he crossed the threshold to the outside. "Potter!" he heard "Potter, get me down!"

Harry grinned. "Hang on, Malfoy, I'm coming." Malfoy's bag lay on the ground, his books scattered on the ground. He gathered the books together and put them bag in the bag, spying a yellowed copy of _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ and an open notebook with "The Sphinx's Rage: Chapter One" scrawled in Malfoy's own loopy flowing script before he pulled his wand out of his pocket and pointed it at him. _Liberacorpus_, he thought, and his target plummeted to the ground, landing with a furious snarled string of obscenities. He fell to his knees and didn't bother rising to his feet, but crawled over to Goyle and snatched his wand. Harry wasn't looking. He had turned back to the castle and began jogging back to the castle.

"Stupify!" Malfoy yelled, brandishing his wand.

Harry dodged aside and pointed his wand directly at his attacker and shouted "_Expelliarmus_!" and then when he missed grabbing Malfoy's wand, he called without thinking, "_Accio_ Malfoy's wand." The wand knocked out of Malfoy's hand didn't fly to Harry. Instead, a faint splash heralded the wand's rise out of the depths of the lake. It zoomed into the palm of his hand, and Harry tried again. "_Accio_ Goyle's wand." He held them together in his left hand. "What was that for Malfoy?" he shouted, irate. "I got you down!"

"Yeah, but your friends put me up there in the first place, didn't they?" he raged. "Give me back my wand, Potter, or I'll-"

"I think you can do more damage to me _with_ your wand," Harry responded. "I want your word that you won't curse me if I give these back to you."

"What? No!" Malfoy howled. "Give me back my wand!"

"Promise me that you won't hex me while I'm going back to the castle," Harry reiterated, "or I won't give you back your wand." At last, Malfoy nodded, and Harry turned and fled back to the castle before Malfoy could renege and accost him again.

* * *

Severus shelved the last of Belby's stolen notes, his completed catalogue pasted to the top of the cardboard box in which he stored them. He had placed a dot next to each potion Belby had published, and the important ones were underlined, but he rested his head in his hands, unwilling to deal with Belby's scheming any longer. The fourth year essays on why the Unforgivable Curses were unforgivable sat unmarked on his desk, and he knew he needed to finish them before class the next day, but he didn't have the energy to do that either. He slumped against the wall next to his bookcase, his eyes closed, rubbing the bridge of his nose where a headache was forming. Before he realized it, he had drifted off to sleep.

A knock at the door woke him with a start. "_What_?" he demanded irritably.

"Can I come in?" Potter's voice echoed, muffled by the walls and door.

"No," he spat, eyes opening into slits.

"Alright then," he heard, and closed his eyes again, satisfied until he heard the door swing open.

"Detention, Potter!" he roared, standing up to his full height and marching toward him, a murderous glint in his eyes.

"McGonagall sent me to tell you that she wants to talk to you this evening about what books you want to assign next year," Potter hurriedly told him.

"Professor McGonagall," he corrected automatically, nonplussed.

"Yeah, I know," Potter muttered, annoyed. "Hey, maybe you'll be the first Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for more than fifty years to teach for two years in a row."

He sneered, "Don't tell me you believe in the curse, Potter."

He expected Potter to tell him he hadn't started teaching for the next year yet, but instead, the young man's head came up sharply. "There was a curse; Voldemort cast it."

"Don't be ridiculous," he derided, "The Dark Lord didn't do everything."

"Dumbledore wouldn't hire him right out of school, and no one has lasted more than a year since," Potter murmured. "Dumbledore told me himself. Of course, he was still Tom Riddle then."

Severus colored, chagrined. "Tell _Professor_ McGonagall that I'll be there in an hour."

Potter turned to leave, his hand on the doorknob, "It's kind of fitting, isn't it, that I defeated him, and you get to be Defense Against the Dark Arts professor again because of it," he mused before he shut the door.

"My heritage has nothing to do with anything," he snapped too quickly. "It makes no difference."

Potter shook his head slowly, lingering in the doorway. "You really are a hypocrite sometimes, aren't you?" he said without bitterness, even a little amusement. "It matters that I'm James Potter's son, but it doesn't matter that you're mine."

"The situation's are entirely different," he glowered.

"How? He didn't raise me either," Potter's eyes were wide and his voice low.

Severus growled, unwilling to acknowledge the validity of the point. With an uncaring wave of his hand, he dismissed his student.

Potter paused before he left. "Do I still have detention?"

"No," Severus muttered sulkily.

Potter's feet clip clopped down the hall, and he was out of sight before Severus realized that they hadn't shouted at each other for the first time. The realization so shocked him that he almost called the boy back to rail at him.

* * *

The wadded parchment soared past Ginny and hit the pudgy "new" first year in a Ravenclaw bow in her hair square in the small of her back. "Nice shot," a girl strolling behind Ginny proclaimed.

"Aw, not that good," her friend who had thrown the parchment demurred. "It's hard to miss a target that big."

The Ravenclaw girl spun around and ducked her head to the side as another parchment wad nearly hit her in the face. "Wow," the first girl exclaimed, "I didn't know something that big could move that fast."

Ginny pivoted on her heel, surprised that she recognized the two girls as "old" Gryffindor first years who had spent a lot of the year previous defying Snape and the Carrows and playing gallant. They finished the year in the Room of Requirement and she'd played exploding snap with them once. She didn't hesitate, but walked between the two girls grimly, and stood behind her. Digging her elbows into the tops of their skulls, she folded her hands and rested her chin on top of them. "I'm a lot bigger," she grinned, "And I move a lot faster."

"Ginny Weasley!" the girl who had thrown the first parchment ball panted. Ginny racked her brain for her name. She lifted her elbows off of their heads and grabbed their red and gold ties, pulling them around to face her.

"Cox, Jenkins," she said mock sweetly, recalling their names at last. "If I see you doing anything like that, I'll tell Professors Flitwick and Switch, and you wouldn't like that, would you? Switch doesn't like it when his students are mean to other students just because they can, and Flitwick _really_ doesn't like it when people make fun of the kids in his house."

Jenkins stared at her, shocked, with something like betrayal in her expression. "Is that all you're going to do, tell on us?"

The Ravenclaw girl watched her out of half closed eyes, chewing the bottom part of her lip. Ginny transferred Cox's tie to the other hand and used her newly free hand to play with her wand. "If I hexed you, I'd be acting like a bully." The two girls shivered, and when she dropped their ties, they sauntered off as quickly as they could.

When Ginny looked up, the Ravenclaw girl was still watching her, so Ginny walked across the corridor to her. "I could have taken care of myself," the girl muttered furiously.

"Hey, they make my house look bad, that's all." Ginny folded her arms and leaned back on her heels, rocking back and forth. "I never said you couldn't."

"Yeah, well, next time, stay out."

"Hey, they're still making my house look bad."

The girl rolled her eyes and flounced off down the hallway, the ends of her bow flapping as she moved. Ginny caught sight of Luna gliding past. She fell in beside her, and through an arm over her shoulder. Her feet took up Luna's floating steady pace as Luna let her keep her arm around her shoulders. It almost seemed as if she didn't notice it was there.

* * *

The redcap was gone, a Grindylow in its place. It swam lazily through seaweed fronds and a fake rock dome of the sort that might have been found at a Muggle pet store, only much larger. When it saw Ginny, it extended its spindly fingers and pressed its palms flat against the glass walls of its tank. Ginny sent it a dark look and stood in front of Snape's desk with her hands on her hips. "So what do I have to do today?"

"Follow me," he ordered, sweeping out from behind his desk and swooping out of his office. Ginny trailed behind him glumly as he made his way through the hallways to the Transfiguration classroom. "Your head of house has graciously allowed us to use his classroom. You should thank him." He conjured a scraper, a wash cloth, and a bucket of soapy water and handed them to her. "There is gum on the underside of the desks," he said flat voiced. There was always gum on the underside of desks; Ginny thought Snape might be running out of ideas. By the time she had finished the fourth desk, she began to wonder if the creators of Droobles Best Blowing Gum had collaborated with former professors of Snape's mould to create a product that they could legitimately tell their students in detention that it could only be cleaned by hand. She thought about chewing a whole package of the stuff and chucking it at Snape's back during class, one point if it stuck to his robes, five if it caught in his pony tail. For a brief moment, she glanced up at him and pondered what he would look like if he had to cut his hair. It didn't bear thinking about; he'd look too much like Harry.

Snape watched her as she worked, his arms folded across his chest, staring down the short, straight nose he had inherited from Harry and Ginny did her best to ignore him. "Have you rethought your plans of vengeance on behalf of your young swain?" He asked, his voice flat.

She set the bucket down on the top of the closest desk, darkly amused. "I think Harry taught you a lesson on his own."

Snape's head snapped up. "Explain that statement, Miss Weasley." He enunciated his words sharply, elongating the consonants and shortening the vowels.

Ginny hid a smirk, unperturbed. "I'll let you off this time, but if you ever say anything that horrible to him again…" She trailed off threateningly, unwilling to give him anything to prepare for. He smiled nastily, choosing to take her lack of specifics as a lack of imagination. Ginny fumed, scraping the last of the gum off the last desk and had to stop herself from throwing the bucket at his face. She wrung the wash cloth out into the bucket and vanished the washcloth and the scraper. With a scowl, she vanished the water as well, leaving lumps of detached gum at the bottom of the bucket. Conjuring a piece of parchment, she dumped the gum into it and wrapped them up before throwing them away. At last, she vanished the bucket too. "Done," she told him with a broad smile, and rushed off to wash her hands.

She caught up with the professor halfway back to his office, her hands still dripping. "Stop following me, Miss Weasley," he growled, "You are dismissed."

She wiped her hands on her robes. "I'm not following you; I'm just going to the same place."

He sped up incrementally and Ginny sped up with him. Each time she matched his speed, he walked faster until he was almost running down the corridor, Ginny still at his heels. "Do you want another detention?"

She smiled sweetly and batted her eyes. "Afraid you'll miss me now that I don't have detention with you? I'm flattered, but really-"

"Shut up." Her teeth closed with a satisfied click.

Harry waited at Snape's office door with a plate of pilfered pastries from the kitchens and a glittering foil covered paper gift bag in the other. Ginny waved at him gleefully while Snape jerked his office door open with a sour expression. Holding the bag out to her, Harry smiled. "Congratulations on being done with detention."

She took it with a snort. "He just ran out of things for me to do. He had me cleaning Switch's classroom." When she turned the bag over, a bag of stink pellets fell out into her palm. Pocketing it, she wrinkled her nose with a wry smile. "Most boys get their girlfriends sweets."

His face fell. "Yeah, I know."

She pulled him into a kiss and one of the pastries toppled off the plate. One handed, she caught it and took a bite, getting icing on the tip of her nose. Harry wiped it off, headless of Snape watching them.

* * *

Severus stood in the doorway to his office as the two made their way through the pastries and Potter sent the plate floating back to the kitchens. She looped her arm around Potter's waist and pulled him close as they strolled down the corridor. Potter's hand touched her hair tentatively, rubbing her ponytail with the pad of his thumb, before settling his arm around her shoulders. She had a brass barrette with green and blue rhinestones holding half of her hair back.

Cursing his own maudlinness, he almost swore he could see a soft golden glow around them. From behind in the dim light of the torches in sconces along the walls, Miss Weasley might have been Lilly Evens. It was with some small horror that he realized he had been carrying a torch for her for more than twenty years. That she was his grandmother merely compounded his disquiet.

The two lovers spoke to each other to quietly for him to hear, and Miss Weasley whispered something into Potter's ear making him laugh. He shook his head smiling at her and Severus snorted derisively. The younger Potter would have taken Lily place better than Miss Weasley, which was itself a disconcerting thought.

He shut the door and put his head into his hands.


	31. Epilogue: Six Years Later

Epilogue: Six Years Later

The house numbers skipped from eleven to thirteen, but the inconsistency, so long entrenched in the neighborhood as to be another part of the street's "character" went mostly ignored by the passersby. A man appeared as if by magic out from behind a wall and his eyes passed from number eleven, to number thirteen as if he were expecting them to reorder themselves to suit convention. He was a very forbidding man, this figure gazing at the houses, with his black clothes and long black hair severely pulled back from his angular face. He was lean and short, but he gave the impression of looming over those much taller, and the few others out on the street in the blustering weather kept their distance.

Severus glared steadily at the space between number eleven and number thirteen until it obligingly resolved itself into Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. The grimy unkempt Victorian brick buildings around only made the scrubbed and painted number twelve seem brighter and fresher by comparison. The soot and slime that had been collecting on the brickwork for over a hundred years had disappeared, washed and pounded away. He wrinkled his nose as he rapped his fist against the black painted wood door, ignoring the sun faced brass door knocker entirely.

The door opened noiselessly upon Harry Potter and a small turquoise headed boy. "I still can't comprehend why you required my presence," he hissed tiredly as Potter waved him inside.

Harry turned to him and sighed. "He's your brother, and he's six months old, and it's about time you met him." He led him down a window lined corridor. The whispering portraits no longer covered up the windows, and the curtains had been pushed aside to let in the light. In place of Mrs. Black's portrait hung a painting of birds in a fruit tree. Everything smelled of clean linen and milk.

Potter turned his head as if he wanted to say something, but before he did, he noticed Severus' small colorful shadow, imitating his stalk, complete with the way his arms moved and his head tilted, all exaggerated in the movements of the seven year old, whose face, moment by moment had taken on Severus' features. "How many times has your gran told you not to imitate people?" Potter asked him. "You know better."

"But-"

"You can't follow someone around if you're just going to be rude."

Potter's badly hidden smile softened his scolding, but the boy ignored it. "Awwwwww," he huffed, his hair becoming a bright banana yellow before fading to dark grey, and he sulked off, the Persian rugs muffling his footfalls and frustrating his attempts to properly stomp.

"Teddy's visiting for the week," Potter explained before continuing down the hall. As they passed the drawing room, Severus noticed that the Black family tree had disappeared and a tapestry of an Art Nouveau fox reaching for grapes on a vine.

Harry led him up the stairs to the topmost landing and pushed one of the two doors open as quietly as he could and ushered Snape inside. The Gryffindor banners and photographs no longer littered the walls. He and Ginny had pulled them down and packed them away for James to see when he was older if he chose. Even the Muggle pinup girls had been saved because Harry couldn't bear to throw away anything of Sirius'. They had polished the chandelier, chipped away the wax, and replaced the candles, painted the walls a soft yellow, and hung the tall window with baby blue drapes. An oak crib stood next to a changing table against one wall, lined with blue bedding, and next to the window sat a plush rocking chair where Ginny, a bump just beginning to show through her blouse, slept in the sunlight. She had done that the first time she'd been pregnant as well, taken naps all the time and then not slept at all at night. Harry smiled and put a finger to his lips.

Ginny slept, but James did not. He peered up at his father as Harry lifted him from the crib and rocked him gently. "He's starting to sit up on his own," he told Snape proudly, kissing the baby's cheek and tickling his belly. The baby's soft coo turned to laughter and the laughter turned to joyful shrieking before his father stopped.

Ginny opened one eye, turned over, and slipped back off to sleep, one hand resting protectively over her belly. With her other hand, she squeezed Harry's arm gently, sleepily.

Severus winced and replied sarcastically, "Fascinating."

Harry shot him an exasperated look. "He's your brother," he reminded Snape as he held James out to him. "Take him."

Severus took him awkwardly and held him against his chest. At first the baby looked back to his father almost reproachfully, but then he looked up at Severus and turned to his chest, fisting his hands in Severus' robes.

The eyes that gazed curiously up at him were hazel, but the tuft of hair brushing against his robes was too dark to be Weasley red. It was the same dark red color as Lily Evens', and that was enough to make a difference.

* * *

_"__Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?"_

_Snape hesitated. His black eyes eager in the greenish gloom, moved over the pale face, the dark red hair._

_"No," he said. "It doesn't make any difference._

* * *

Author's Note: I wanted to thank everyone who read or reviewed this fic, especially lothy/lanta who posted the challenge on which this fic is based (and recced it, isn't that awesome?) ObsidianEmbrace who also recced my story, celadonserpent who acted as an unofficial beta for parts of it, and blue_underwing whose insights made reading my email much more fun.

When I started writing this, I thought it would be much shorter, about ten chapters. Had I known it would be this long when I started, I would have expanded the part at the beginning with Eileen and Harry.

I always intended to leave the relationship between Harry and Snape rocky, but I hope I brought it to some resolution. I also intended that the fic fit with the canon epilogue, except that Albus Potter has a different middle name: Alastor, after Mad-Eye Moody.

There are two one shot companion pieces to this story, "Literary Minds" and "Fairytale Princess" which should answer some of the questions I left unanswered in this fic proper. Although I am absorbed with other fanfiction projects at the moment, I doubt they will be the last one shots I write in the "No Difference" Universe.


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